May 07 2012
How Recover an Unsaved PowerPoint 2010 File
Ooops. I just closed the PPTX file I was working on that I hadn’t saved in a few hours. (c) iStockphoto / Thinkstock
You’ve been working tirelessly on a presentation. The creativity is flowing, you’re in a groove, and you’re masterfully pulling together what will be an epic PowerPoint presentation. For whatever reason as you juggle various files on your desktop, a part of your brain cramps up and you accidentally close (without saving) your presentation. This may never have happened to you, but it has happened to me a few times, including last Friday.
I was building a product demo presentation in PowerPoint, and I was incorporating multiple screenshot images from Photoshop. With multiple PowerPoint files and applications open on my desktop, I stared briefly at a window that I thought was an image I had already captured and cropped in Photoshop. I closed the “Photoshop” file, and then looked for my main PowerPoint file. To my disappointment, I realized I had just closed my PowerPoint presentation. Then my mind raced back to when I had last saved the file – surely I hadn’t been that stupid and had saved it recently. Right? Right?!!
To my horror, I discovered I hadn’t been diligently saving my presentation, and the last saved version was from a few hours ago. I had been “in the zone” previously, and now it was going to cost me dearly.
Don’t hit the panic button if you’re using PowerPoint 2010 (c) iStockphoto / Thinkstock
Panic started setting in because I really didn’t have time to redo what I had already done. Nothing feels as unproductive (and stupid) as reproducing something I had already created once before, especially when it would take me 2-3 hours I didn’t have. When your computer crashes or is unexpectedly interrupted, Microsoft displays recovered files when you restart PowerPoint. However, in this case the software wouldn’t know that user-error had caused me to lose the most recent version of my PowerPoint file. I then thought if PowerPoint’s AutoRecover feature is saving a temporary file of my presentations for when something unexpected happens, a more recent version of my presentation must be sitting somewhere on my computer. If I could just find it, a personal crisis would be averted.
Steps to recover a previously saved file in PowerPoint 2010
Step 1: The first thing you need to confirm is that you have AutoRecover enabled. If PowerPoint’s AutoRecover feature has been disabled, you’re royally screwed (sorry). Go to File > Options and a pop-up Options menu window will appear. Then go to the Save tab. Within the Save tab under the Save Presentations section at the top of the window, you’ll see some different AutoRecover options. Hopefully, you have the two options below enabled (they should be by default in PowerPoint 2010).
By default you should have these two options checked.
Step 2: In this same window, you’ll see that PowerPoint tells you where it saves the AutoRecover files on your computer.
Now you know where to find a more recently saved version of your PPT file
To find these files, I went to my local disk (C: drive) and then followed the folder structure listed below. I can’t recall if some of these folders are hidden so here’s a link to how to unhide folders in Windows 7 and Windows XP. Look for a folder that contains the name of your PowerPoint file and open that folder to find the most recently saved version of your presentation.
This folder looks like the presentation I was working on.
There’s the temporary file I need, saved 13 minutes prior to my ill-timed brain fart.
Steps to recover a new file in PowerPoint 2010
If you’re working on a new PowerPoint file that you never saved before such as a presentation from an email attachment, there’s a slightly different and easier approach for recovering those files. In PowerPoint 2010, just go to File > Recent and at the very bottom right you’ll see a link for “Recover Unsaved Presentations”, which will take you to a folder with PowerPoint files that were never saved when the files were closed.
If you didn’t know it was there, you’d probably never see the link.
Note: These files are temporary and will be deleted from your computer if you don’t retrieve them promptly. I couldn’t find any information on how long you have to grab the files, but assume you have 2-3 days max.
Happy Endings
Hooray! I don’t have to spend even more time in PowerPoint! (c) iStockphoto / Thinkstock
The first method worked for me, and I was able to recover all of the work I had lost. I wanted to share this tip in the hope that it helps other people who find themselves in the same situation as me (or may find themselves in the same situation in the future). There is hope! This new feature only applies to PowerPoint 2010 so while my heart goes out to you if you have a previous version, I don’t have any tips for the same situation with PowerPoint 2007 or 2003. It appears the temporary files for those versions were limited to only recovery situations where your system crashed unexpectedly and not user error situations. It’s a good thing I only recently started making user errors in PowerPoint 2010 and never in the other versions…
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June 4th, 2012 at 11:55 am
Strange, just reading the title of this post, made my tummy a little sick. When you can’t retrieve any sort of file you have been working on (even if in the back of your mind you know a way to retrieve it, your immediate response is physical sickness hehe.
Great tips:)
June 4th, 2012 at 3:54 pm
Panic and sheer terror are other emotions I’ve felt in these situations.
July 12th, 2012 at 10:18 am
Thank you man, you saved my life!
August 2nd, 2012 at 9:07 am
This is amazing!! Thank you so much.
September 18th, 2012 at 6:59 am
Hallelujah! Thanks for the crystal clear instructions and for saving my bacon. You just saved me a ton of time.
September 20th, 2012 at 7:34 am
I’m glad it helped!
October 9th, 2012 at 7:40 pm
Hi
I seem to have lost a powerpoint I have worked on for ages this morning. I opened an attachment to my gmail account, worked on it, saved it and closed it. Yet it doesn’t show up on “recent” in Powerpoint, doesn’t show up on “Recover Unsaved presentations” and isn’t sitting in the C:…AppData\Microsoft\Powerpoint\directory. It must be somewhere. I remember hitting Alt F S before I closed it. HELP!!!
October 18th, 2012 at 4:32 am
I apologize for not responding sooner, Kerry. When you open a PowerPoint file as an email attachment, start working on it, and save it, by default you’ll save the file to a temporary folder if you’re not careful. In many cases, this presentation won’t show up in the Recent files list. As a result, I would go back to the same email and re-open the original file. When you have the same file open, hit “Save As”. In most cases, you’ll be taken to the exact same temporary folder where you accidentally saved your file. In some cases, you might be saving to another temporary folder, but you at least know the general vicinity of your PowerPoint file. Identify the folder location of your file and move the file to a proper folder. I hope that helps others who run into the same problem.
Tip: ALWAYS use “Save As” if you start working on a PowerPoint file from an email. Do it early so you don’t forget and then wonder where your file is.
Brent.
October 19th, 2012 at 9:48 am
you saved me!!!!! Thank you for this!!!!
October 20th, 2012 at 2:10 am
Thank you sooooo much, I can’t believe how tired I was that I closed the wrong window and didn’t save for whatever reason. I was having a full blown panic attack, I didn’t want to do four hours of work over. Thank you thank you thank you thank you
October 24th, 2012 at 4:51 pm
You’re a life saver
I almost lost everything and you helped me so much 
October 25th, 2012 at 12:56 am
very helpfull
November 14th, 2012 at 1:17 pm
YOU ROCK
November 29th, 2012 at 4:46 am
Great
December 3rd, 2012 at 9:24 pm
I owe you my thanks Sir!
December 12th, 2012 at 3:24 pm
This was a great help. thank you for taking the time to post it.
By the way, the “Recover Unsaved presentations” button was at the bottom of the “Recent” dialog box, not where you indicated.
December 16th, 2012 at 7:45 pm
Just Happened to me! Thanks for the tip!
December 18th, 2012 at 10:00 pm
I too have faced same issues when I have accidentally closed the document before saving it. So, this is very important feature for me. I have never use this feature in PowerPoint But I used it in word 2010 by Clicking Recover Unsaved Documents option. Thank you for sharing it here.
January 21st, 2013 at 7:05 pm
Thanks! You just save me a million of hours to redo my work. Thankfully I found this article.
January 29th, 2013 at 8:17 am
tried it, my powerpoint folder was empty:( Worked all night on it from an email, saved a ton of times, never did save as, and it’s not in either of these folders. I appreciate the though, seems like it should
February 7th, 2013 at 4:09 pm
Thank you! You just saved my life!
February 11th, 2013 at 7:15 pm
Yes! This worked for me too! I closed my PowerPoint prez without saving the latest changes, and was able to navigate to the right folder using your instructions.
Thanks!
February 13th, 2013 at 8:09 am
I had been working on a presentation for my Pgcert and powerpoint crashed, thanks to you I managed to locate and restore the version I was working on rather than a previous version minus all the extra work I had done today… thank you!!!
February 14th, 2013 at 11:05 pm
OMG.. I wish I could buy you lunch!! Absolute life saver. Additional tip, if the powerpoint is not save with at PPT extention, lauch Powerpoint and direct it to read the file!
February 21st, 2013 at 10:17 pm
You just saved my sanity!!
Thank you, thank you!
February 25th, 2013 at 10:19 pm
Much better than that “Oh @@#^%43″ feeling was that feeling of relief when the modified file was there.
Thank you!
March 1st, 2013 at 6:36 pm
I gone through you article, thanks to provide information about recovery but I had lost my crucial PPT files before 3 months is it possible to restore PPT file without any destruction to files.
March 19th, 2013 at 7:04 am
DUDE!!!!!! You saved me BIG TIME!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!
April 3rd, 2013 at 12:46 pm
This just saved me!! Thanks a million.
April 4th, 2013 at 12:12 am
If you use Microsoft PP 2010 you can recover unsaved data by going to file, info, manage versions, recover unsaved presentations.
April 8th, 2013 at 8:09 pm
I have to tell you that you this just kept me from FREAKING OUT. My face is still red and hot because I had already started crying. I can’t believe I closed out of the presentation without saving HOURS and HOURS (literally) of work. “Thank you” doesn’t even seem good enough…but thank you.
April 8th, 2013 at 9:30 pm
I didn’t know about that shortcut to unsaved presentations. Thanks for sharing!
Brent.
April 8th, 2013 at 9:31 pm
Glad I could help in some small way.
Cheers,
Brent.
April 11th, 2013 at 3:42 pm
Thank you for your help recovering a power point that I spent hours on and didn’t save because my computer locked up! Whew! Much appreciated.
April 11th, 2013 at 5:33 pm
God damn dude, I could kiss you right now! Thank you so much!
April 16th, 2013 at 6:59 am
You saved me a lot of shit with this webpage.
Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeers
May 5th, 2013 at 4:19 am
You stopped the tears from the eyes of my little girl.
Thank you so much
May 6th, 2013 at 11:41 pm
I am thrilled! I lost a power point presentation that had taken me 14 hours to write. With these directions I immediately found it. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
May 9th, 2013 at 8:35 pm
This was very very very helpful. I was about to give up and come clean to my boss that I was an idiot that didn’t even have the presence of mind to save a file. This saved me. Thanks a ton for the clear instructions.
May 22nd, 2013 at 8:30 pm
Thanks you legend!
May 23rd, 2013 at 1:35 am
Thank you seems inadequate! You saved me 3 hours of work! Presentation tomorrow! It’s midnight and I just recovered PowerPoint presentation!
You are amazing! I am wishing for good things to come your way!