I accidentally deleted the latest version of my dissertation, emptied the Trash, and didn't have a backup of the recent work. The only recoverable copy I've found is from mid-2025 and is missing months of writing. I tried Word's recovery options, searched the temporary files, and ran Disk Drill. Disk Drill recovered much older papers and other deleted files, but not the dissertation. I also didn't have OneDrive or Time Machine enabled. Is there anything else I can try before accepting that the document is gone?
3 Answers
It’s worth checking every possible secondary copy: OneDrive, iCloud Drive, email attachments, printed drafts, USB drives, collaborators’ computers, and document versions created before major edits. If you have printed pages, scanning them with OCR could at least recover the text, although formatting and recent edits may be lost.
Check Word’s temporary and AutoRecovery locations manually. On a Mac, search Finder for files beginning with “WRD” and inspect Microsoft Word’s folders under Library > Containers, especially the temporary-data directories. Word sometimes leaves a renamed temporary copy there even when the normal recovery screen shows nothing.
I already checked Word’s temporary files, but I’ll search the Microsoft Word container folders directly for any WRD files I may have missed.
For the future, keep the working file in at least two locations and use dated versions rather than overwriting one copy. Automatic cloud syncing plus Time Machine or another external backup would protect against exactly this kind of disaster.
Unfortunately, nobody else has a copy of the version containing the recent changes, and I didn’t have cloud syncing enabled.