How can I recover an unsaved file?

[epaez]

I forgot to save a word file while using Dropbox and I'm trying to recover that unsaved file. can anyone help me, please?

[Walter · Accepted solution]

Hey there @epaez  - how are you today?

Can you please let me know if you can see any edits of this file logged under your Events page? 

Could you also check the file's version history to see if there were any edits saved in Dropbox recently?

If these suggestions aren't helpful in your case, I'm afraid those files are nowhere to be recovered from (on our side at least). 

Let me know what you find!

[epaez]

It is not under events page nor file's version history. 

Thank you for your time. 

[Walter]

It might worth checking with Microsoft Word's forum as well in this case (assuming that you were using Microsoft Word to edit the file in question) @epaez! Depending on your device's OS and the Word's version as well, there might be something you could do to retrieve this unsaved document - I'd suggest using an internet search for more information on this. 

I wish I could help more than this 

[epaez]

@Walter thank you for your help! 

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[Walter]

No worries @epaez - have a wonderful week ahead!

[Euergetes]

I am using a Mac. Hi all, in the past months I've been working on an article in Word for Mac. The docx file was on an external hard drive synced to my dropbox account, just like all my other articles. The docx was open in Word for days and I kept hitting the save icon from time to time. Autosave wasn't on apparently, but I am a little confused here because the slider was off but the checkmark was there under the 3 dots.

Yesterday as I finished writing I realized that there is a typo in the file's name. So I closed the word file (it didn't ask to save because I save by hitting the save icon). I renamed the file and I renamed the enclosing folder as well as it had the same typo. When I opened the word file to send it off, it was the version from a week ago like nothing ever happened...

Not understanding what happened, I went to Dropbox and wanted to restore the full version from Version History. Interestingly it didn't see any activity from the past 2 days except one "viewing" from March 31. As if it wasn't saving or syncing at all in the past 2 days. 

Then I started panicking, run Disk Drill for data recovery, it did find a docx, named exactly as my article that is lost but when I hit restore it just gave me the same old version. 

Does anyone understand what happened here? How come I can't find this file? How is that possible that for a week I kept hitting the save button in word and yet, word thinks that my latest version is the one from a week ago. How is that possible that Dropbox sees some interaction with the file from March 31 and sees something happening to it on the 1st, but when I hit restore it gives me the same old version, like nothing ever happened. This is turning out to be the cruelest April 1st joke ever. And I missed my deadline as well...

Any help is appreciated!

[Mark]

Hi @Euergetes 

For whatever reason nothing has sync'd on Dropbox between those two dates (meaning Dropbox cannot recover anything). Was Dropbox running? It sounds to me like the Mac has had issues saving.

What is www.dropbox.com/events showing?

[Euergetes]

Hi Mark, thanks a lot for responding! I just looked at the entire even catalog for yesterday as you suggested and it seems that you're right. No syncing of the word file happened between 03.29 and 04.01. This is why Dropbox can't find any versions. It seems that somehow dropbox sync was frozen. What I don't understand still is how can it be possible that I kept hitting save in word and yet no saving has happened. Or if it did it was overwritten when I changed the name. So I should look for the file in word. Do you know if there is any way to recover seemingly deleted data in word? Thanks if you have any suggestions. 

Best,

Krisztian

[Rich]

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@Euergetes wrote:

Or if it did it was overwritten when I changed the name.

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Rename the file back to what it was (the folder too, possibly, not sure) and THEN check the version history.