Jan 27, 2024 • Filed to: Recover Files • Proven solutions
In today’s world of Google Drive and other cloud-based text editors, many use WordPad and MS Word for multiple reasons. It could be because they are used to it, poor internet connection, project requirements, or any other reason.
One thing that people who work with WordPad know that you have to keep pressing “Ctrl” + “S” simultaneously while typing otherwise your document won’t get saved. Be it a Windows crash, scheduled restart, or anything else, we often find ourselves in a situation where we need to recover an unsaved or deleted Word document.
In this article on how to recover the WordPad document, we will look at various tried & tested ways to recover a WordPad document. Let’s begin!
There are many different solutions available to recover WordPad document - unsaved or deleted. But before we get into the technicalities of the solutions, let’s answer the top questions people ask for related to recover a WordPad document.
No. WordPad doesn’t have an autosave function. At least, there are no direct ways to recover WordPad documents that are provided in the system itself.
The short answer to this question is - Yes, you can recover unsaved WordPad or Notepad documents. As mentioned earlier, WordPad & Notepad doesn’t have an autosave function but still, there are a few ways you can recover your WordPad document. Later in this article, we will talk about a few ways to recover WordPad document.
WordPad is still used by many people because it supports quite a variety of file extensions. WordPad can read and save files in .txt format (plain text files), .rtf format (rich text format), .odt (OpenDocument Text format) and .doc/.docx format (Microsoft Word file format).
Now that we have answered the top commonly asked questions around how to recover WordPad document, let’s look at a few solutions for the same.
In this section, we will talk only about methods to recover WordPad document that works 100% of the time.
This solution of how to recover WordPad document doesn’t recover any software. You can recover previous versions of your WordPad document from your hard drive using this solution.
There are two conditions for this solution to work:
Simply follow these steps to recover WordPad document.
Step 1: Open “This Computer” from your home screen. Alternatively, you can go to “Start” and then, “My Computer”.
Step 2: Go to the original location where your WordPad file was stored. If the entire folder is lost, create a folder, and give it the same name as the original one. The contents of this folder don’t matter at this point.
Step 3: Right-click on the folder you just created or the original folder where you lost your file from, and click on the “Restore Previous Version” option.
Step 4: On the following screen, choose the version of the folder that contains your WordPad files. Drag and drop the folder to your desktop to recover WordPad documents.
This is one of the ways that can help you recover WordPad document. But this method, as mentioned at the beginning, requires your knowledge of where the original file or folder was saved and what was its name.
Remember how we said that WordPad doesn’t autosave directly? Well, that’s true but temp files are created when we create a different document in WordPad. In this section, we will look at how to recover WordPad documents using these temp files.
Follow the steps mentioned below to recover WordPad document using temp files.
Step 1: Navigate to the “Start” menu on your Windows PC, type “.tmp” and hit the “Enter” key.
Step 2: At the bottom of the toolbar, select the “Other” button.
Step 3: Click on the “Date Modified” section as shown in the screenshot below to find the most recent file. You can also navigate to select a file that is saved on the data & time you were working on your WordPad file.
Step 4: Once you find the .tmp file(s), drag and drop it (or them) to desktop and change its type to the .odt format.
You now have successfully recovered your unsaved WordPad document. The next and the last solution we will be providing is the ultimate solution to recover WordPad document or any other document - deleted or unsaved.
Wondershare Recoverit is one of the most used and recommended data recovery tools. You can use it to recover any type of file using this tool - a video file, audio file, WordPad, or any other types of files.
In this section, I am going to show you how to recover all kinds of files, including recovery of WordPad document. Follow these steps to recover your files using Wondershare Recoverit.
Step 1: Get Recoverit
Download Recoverit Wondershare for your Windows PC or laptop. Click on the .exe file, following the download, to install it.
Step 2: Launch Recoverit
Open the Wondershare Recoverit tool. Choose the location from where you have lost your unsaved or deleted WordPad file. It usually is stored in “Local Disk (:C)”. You might have to select the exact folder where you have lost your WordPad file from.
Once you find the location from where you have lost your WonderPad file, click on “Start”.
Step 3: Scan File
Scan the list of files/folders that appear. Once you locate the folder which contains your files, you can stop the scanning process.
Step 4: Preview and Recover
Click on the folder or file to preview it. If you are sure that you have found the WordPad folder or file you were looking for, click on “Recover”.
Step 5: Save File
Choose the path where you want to save your recovered WordPad file. It is recommended not to save the file at the same location as where you lost it.
Using these 5 steps you can easily recover WordPad document that you forgot to save or accidentally deleted. You can follow the same process to recover other types of files, other than WordPad document, as well.
WordPad is used by many but when situations wherein you lose an important file when a deadline is approaching, things can get pretty disturbing. This is why a guide to recover WordPad document like this can come in handy.
Having said that, Wondershare Recoverit is an easy-to-use data recovery tool. You can use it to successfully recover WordPad document without any hassle or risk of data loss. Download it today to recover your WordPad document!
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Eleanor Reed
staff Editor