How to Recover Deleted or Permanently Deleted Excel Files

Overview of Deleted Excel File Recovery

Microsoft Office Excel, a spreadsheet application, distributed by Microsoft. Its wonderful features make it a very widely applied spreadsheet. From Microsoft Office Excel 2007 for Windows, 2008 for Mac, Office Excel 2009/2010 till now Office Excel 2016, Microsoft really made a great job in updating its Office tools.

When you delete excel files from the computer and empty them from the Recycle Bin or Trash Bin, they would disappear from your computer. The excel contents would not be destroyed immediately. Windows or Mac will mark excel files for deletion and removes them from the file system database when you delete them. This doesn't mean they are immediately gone, and you still have a chance to undelete excel files. 

Part 1. Three Methods to Restore Deleted Excel Files

In fact, when you delete a file, Windows or Mac will mark the space occupied. Therefore, if you need to recover deleted excel files, don't save new data into space where you used to store the excel files so to prevent new data overwriting the deleted excel files.

So, how to recover deleted excel files? Here are three methods on how to recover deleted Excel, follow the details below:

If you are using Mac, also read how to recover unsaved excel files on Mac.

Method 1. Restore Deleted Excel from the Previous Version

This method is very helpful for users to restore excel files or documents in partitions, not the desktop. How to do it?

• Step 1: Right-click the inaccessible Excel document and choose "Properties".
• 
• Step 2: Open the "Previous Version" tab to list all the previously stored version of the Excel file.
• Step 3: Choose the right version and click "Restore" to retrieve the document.

Method 2. Undelete Excel Files from Recycle Bin

If you've created Excel files on the desktop and you carelessly deleted it, it will be simple for you to restore it from the recycle bin.

• Step 1: Open "Recycle bin".
• Step 2: Right-click the deleted Excel and choose "Restore".

Method 3. Recover Deleted Excel Files with Undelete Software

This method is used to restore permanently deleted excel files without backups. If you have emptied the recycle bin in Windows 10/8/7 etc, you'll need professional data recovery software to help you. 

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is a powerful data recovery software. It undeletes files even if you've emptied the Recycle Bin or format the file. 

Supported OS

• Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP, Windows Server 2003 - 2019.
• Mac OS X 10.6 - 10.11 macOS 10.12 - 10.14.

If you use Mac, you can also download the Mac version data recovery software to restore lost excel files.

Supported Office Version

• Office 2003 - 2019 (Including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint).
• Also read: how to undelete Word documents. 

Simple steps for Excel file recovery are as follows:

Step 1. Specify a location

Run EaseUS Data Recovery Software, firstly, you're asked to choose a location to start. Choose the drive X: or perhaps a specific folder on Desktop or somewhere else, and then click "Scan".

Step 2. Scan data

During the scan, you'll see more and more data showing up very quickly in the "Deleted files" result. That's part of what the software has found and displayed.

Step 3. Preview and recover

To quickly find the Excel files in the massive data in the scan results, click on the "Filter" on the top area and choose "Documents". Or, search .xls or .xlsx in the Search box. Select the desired files and click "Recover".

Part 2. Two Solutions to Retrieve Unsaved Excel

If you forget to save your Excel files, you can follow the two solutions to restore Excel files.

Solution 1. From Temp File 

Step 1: Follow the temporary file folder location on your PC and find the crashed or unsaved/lost Excel document.

• For Windows 10/8 users:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\UnsavedFiles

• For Windows 7 users:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\ 

Step 2: Check and select the temporary unsaved Excel file which the program crashes, then copy and save it as a new file.

Solution 2. From AutoRecover

Make sure that you have turned on the AutoRecover feature in Excel and then you can recover data.

Step 1: Open a new Excel file.

Step 2: Click "File" > "Open" > "Recent" option.

Step 3: Then check the recently used Excel document and find the unsaved file.

Step 4: Click "Recover Unsaved Workbooks" and wait.

Step 5: You can open the Excel file and click "Save AS" to store the Excel as a new file to a safe location on your PC.