Microsoft Word is the most popular application of the MS Office Suite. It is extensively used by individuals, professionals, and organization to create, edit, and maintain their essential documents. It has a lot of unique features like efficient spell check, autocorrect, bullets and numbering, image tools, multiple design options, and much more. However, One difficulty with MS Word is that it is also vulnerable to corruption and errors.
Common MS Word errors and issues
When corrupt, MS Word documents may show unexpected behavior: they may send error messages, display layout/formatting incorrectly, show unreadable characters on the screen, renumber pages repeatedly, redo breaks in the page, or halt the computer from responding. Also, it may send some error messages like:
“Word document will not open. Word document appears to be corrupted, unreadable or damaged.”
“Unexpected error occurred and a word document hasn’t been saved and/or how to recover a lost word file.”
“The macros in the project are disabled. Please refer to the online help or documentation of the host application to determine how to enable macros.”
All these error messages indicate damages to the MS word document or its template. Usually, such errors occur when the Word file fail to save the information because of abrupt exit. It is better to be ready to tackle such issues by taking necessary steps in advance.
Ways to be prepared against MS Word issues
There are many ways to repair damaged MS word documents—using inbuilt tools or using professional MS Word recovery tools. Also, it is recommended to be prepared against such issues. Here, we will show how to use the AutoRecover feature to recover Word documents after they are closed unexpectedly.
How to configure auto recovery settings in MS Word?
The inbuilt AutoRecover feature of MS Word helps in recovering accidentally closed files. It saves the data in definite intervals as specified by the user to facilitate recovery when there is a need. Here is the complete procedure to use the AutoRecover feature:
- Define AutoRecover settings in MS Word
- Recover unsaved MS Word data from .asd file
Define AutoRecover settings in MS Word
To configure AutoRecover settings as per requirement:
- Open MS Word. Click File > Options. The Word Options dialogue box appears.
- Go to Save tab on the left pane.
- Under Save documents, lower the time interval to Save AutoRecover information every <n> minute. Also, check the Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving. Also, provide AutoRecover file location where you want to save the AutoRecover file. Then click OK.
After configuring the AutoRecover settings, MS Word saves the document in .asd format.
Recover unsaved MS Word data from .asd file
Now if MS Word closes accidently before saving, the information till the last AutoRecover point can be recovered from the automatically saved .asd document. Accessing the .asd file is also quite easy.
- Just open a new MS word file. Click File > Open.
- In Open, scroll down to the end and click Recover Unsaved Documents.
- On clicking Recover Unsaved Documents, the location where the .asd file is saved opens up. Just select the file and click Open. Now the file will open from the last point it was saved.
How to deal with severe MS Word corruption issues?
Recovering MS Word documents from .asd file is possible only if the Word document is healthy. This method will not work for those Word files which are corrupt due to abrupt shut down.
A corrupt MS word file may become accessible with the help of Word Repair tool. This tool can recover corrupt .doc and .docx files instantly and retrieve complete information including text, images, graphs, properties, hyperlinks, tables, and bookmarks. It supports all the versions of MS word and can work on large size document files.
Conclusion
The AutoRecover feature of MS Word helps users to recover the data after unexpected closing of MS Word documents. This feature saves data at specified intervals set by the user. So when there is a requirement, the user can recover the data (up to the last AutoRecover saving). But when MS Word documents face serious issues, the AutoRecover feature may not be helpful to recover the lost data. More sophisticated repair solutions like Word Recovery are necessary then. This tool ensures recovery in a few steps and follows the same recovery procedure for all the versions of the Word.
