How to recover previously saved version of a Word document on Windows XP?

Question

Someone please help!!! I was editing an invoice and meant to do "save as" but accidentally hit "save" instead. Is there any way to recover the pre-edit original document???

Answer 1

There might be.  Try this:

1. Open the document.  DO NOT EDIT ANYTHING IN IT.

2. Click the Tools->Options menu item.

3. Click the Save tab.

4. If the Always Create Backup Copy checkbox is checked you might be lucky.  Close the Options dialog box.

5. Click the File->Save As (NOT FILE->SAVE) menu item.

6. In the dialog box, click the directory list box to expand it and note the full path of the directory.

7. Close Word.

8. Open Windows Explorer (My Computer) and navigate to the directory you wrote down.

9. Look for a file with the same name as your document, but with the extension .wbk instead of .doc.

10. If you find it, it will contain the last pre-editing version of the file.  Copy it somewhere safe.  It's gold to you.

11. Make a copy of the file with the extension .wbk instead of .doc.  You should now be able to open it in Word.

Good luck.