Retrieve Word Documents Saved on USB Drive

“I have lost a very important document from my USB drive; I was working on some Word files on my notebook a few days ago. I used to open Word documents directly from my USB and save them on itself without copying those Word files to my notebook. I’m on Microsoft Vista, is there any way that I can get back those lost Word files from flash drive?”

This kind of mishap can happen to anyone prior warning, usually people store their important information on their USB drives; sometimes the value of data stored on USB drive is more worth than the drive itself. However USB drives are not stable as compared to other storage devices and using them to store vital data for too long is a very bad idea. In many cases, Word files from USB drive can get lost / deleted due to many unforeseen reasons. But luckily with the help of a few inbuilt techniques or using a recovery tool, you can retrieve these Word documents easily. Before going into the recovery steps, let’s have a look at some case scenarios for deletion / loss of Microsoft Word files from USB drives as listed below:

  • Word files mistakenly deleted from USB drive does not get stored in Windows Recycle Bin
  • Formatting USB device containing your Microsoft Word documents
  • Corruption of USB drive due to virus / malware infections or drive errors
  • Antivirus utility scanning USB drive for viruses may erase certain Word files without your knowledge
  • Abnormal system shutdown while transferring Word documents from USB to computer

Using Inbuilt Feature:

Microsoft Office provides a useful tool like “Auto Recover”, which sometimes help you retrieve your missing / erased document files. Auto Recover is a feature that constantly saves the contents of a working Word file; this feature is very helpful for those users who lost their documents due to improper system termination while working on their Word document.

The default Auto Recovery file location is:

“c:\users\username\Appdata\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\”

Note: To use this feature you need to change settings in MS Word Application.

Go to start---> Microsoft Word ---> go to File ---> Options ---> Click on save tab ---> Tick the “save auto recovery information every 10(Req) minutes” and tick also the “keep the last AutoSaved version if I close without saving”

However if your Word document is lost and your “Auto Recover” option is not enabled, then only way to restore Word files from USB drive is to use relaible third party file recovery software available on internet.

Utility for restoring Word files from flash drive:

Yodot File Recovery software is fine document recovery tool that helps you in retrieving all types of documents from USB drive and any removable storage device like memory cards, portable hard drives, etc. The tool effectively retrieves both lost and deleted Word files from USB due to any reason. The software supports recovery of many MS Office and other documents such as doc, docx, ppt, pptx, xls, xlsx, pst, dbx, pdf, mdb, zip, rar and so on from various storage drives on Windows OS.

Download File Recovery for Windows Download File Recovery for Mac

Word Document Recovery from USB:

  • Connect your USB drive to a healthy Windows computer
  • Download Yodot File Recovery and install the software
  • Run the software by double clicking the icon
  • Click on “Deleted File Recovery” option to retrieve your deleted Word file from USB or “Lost File Recovery “option to retrieve your missing document file from USB
  • The software scans and displays all logical and external drives connected to the system
  • Choose your USB drive from where you lost Word files
  • The software repeats scanning process and shows all recovered Word documents from USB drive
  • Select the Word files which you would like to recover back
  • Finally save recovered Word file to your desired location; not to the same USB drive

Things to Remember:

  • Don’t use your USB storage drive to store any data after losing vital data
  • Backup all important contents from USB drive before formatting it
  • Use a quality antivirus program to remove deadly viruses from your USB as well as your system

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