Microsoft Office: Document Recovery

Word

My first introduction to document recovery was when I was working on a college paper. I was trying to hammer out a paper using Microsoft Word. During that process, Windows 10 (without warning) decided to restart the computer to install a critical Windows update. Waiting through nail-biting minutes of the Windows 10 updates being installed, I found that my college paper was saved at the last moment. It seems that AutoRecovery saved the day. 

Flashforward into the future, I'm working on a help desk when I received a call from a user that was needing help recovering a Word Document. User confirmed that Windows did a random restart for a Windows 10 update. I know what you’re thinking…AutoRecovery saved the day. I remoted into the user’s computer via IBM BigFix. I found out that the document wasn't being displayed on the AutoRecovery list. AutoRecovery missed the boat on this situation or the list wasn’t updated. With the user’s help, I decided to do an Index search for the document in File Explorer. The document was located. However, the Word document had a file extension of “.asd.”

Through some Google searching, I found the following Microsoft Support page:

The Word Document was located in C:\user\****\appdata\Roaming\Microsoft\Word (User had a Roaming Profile).

I was able to fully recover the document by rename the file extension from .asd to .doc.

User was so happy that document was recovered because it was 15 hours of work that involved compiling research into one document.

Note: You should make another copy of the file before you start the recovery process.

Frozen Document

Another call to the help desk was received by me for a recovery on a frozen PowerPoint document. User was working on a laptop (Thick Client). The user spent over 4 hours working on her PowerPoint. She (user) didn't remember if the document was saving the during creation of it. User was very emotional, which might have contributed to me being more cautious with trying to resolve the problem. Anyhow, I gained remote access to the user's computer over Skype. The only good thing about the situation was that the user still had the frozen document opened when she called in.

After putting the user on hold (side-note: hold is a great tool to calm yourself and give you a chance to collect your thoughts). I determined that the best course of action was to focus on unfreezing the document so that it could be saved. Moreover, I didn't want to be in the position of trying to do a recovery on the PowerPoint. The following were failed attempts to unfreeze the document:

• Open Task Manager (sometime can cause programs to start responding)
• Open another instance of PowerPoint by right-clicking on the Frozen PowerPoint instance located on the Windows Taskbar and selecting PowerPoint
• pressed short-cut keys of Ctrl+S for saving it
• Attempt to click on Frozen PowerPoint's File Option to see if it would respond

At this point, I was torn between either closing the document by clicking on Red X so that PowerPoint would prompt for saving it, or select restart from the Windows Start Menu to receive the prompted for the options of "Restart Anyway" or "Cancel (of course the option to cancel would be a more desirable option to keep the document alive than the option to restart)."

Solution:

I choose to select restart from the Windows Start Menu. I directed the user to cancel out of the restart instead going the route of "Restarting Anyways" (Lost sight of the user’s screen because of Windows prompt pause Skype’s presentation mode). Magically, the PowerPoint document became unfrozen for the user to be able to save it. Once again, another user was more than pleased to not lose a document.


After the call, I thought about another solution that might unfreeze the document as the following

1. Exit out of all Microsoft Office products (except PowerPoint) through path of File > Exit (Environment: user had both Outlook and Skype opened)
2. Then, open MS Word for the purpose of signing out the user's account and sign back into it (a solution that can correct account issue with Outlook)..... and maybe...Abracadabra .. PowerPoint is Unfrozen.

Preventative action: AutoSave Option

In regards to the above experience, I would recommend turning on AutoSave option. Microsoft states, "AutoSave is a new feature available in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 subscribers that saves your file automatically, every few seconds, as you work." Definitely, document saving is less stressful than performing document recovery.

For more information about AutoSave, visit the following Microsoft informative webpage: