PowerPoint Recovery on Mac: Recover Unsaved PPT

How to recover unsaved PowerPoint Mac? Can you recover PowerPoint files that are unsaved, overwritten, corrupted, or accidentally deleted? You can perform a full PowerPoint recovery on Mac by restoring from the autorecover, temporary files, older version as well as the capable EaseUS PowerPoint recovery software here.

Table of Contents

Generally speaking, you want to recover your PowerPoint files on your Mac in two situations: your files are lost or deleted accidentally or they are closed unexpectedly without being saved. You may know that recovering lost/deleted PowerPoint files is different from restoring unsaved PPT files, which is more complex and with a lower chance of success. Figure out the situation you are in and choose the corresponding solution to apply.

Workable Solutions Step-by-step Troubleshooting
Part 1. Recover Lost/Deleted PowerPoint Download EaseUS PowerPoint file recovery software > choose the location > scan...Full steps
Part 2. Recover Unsaved PowerPoint Method 1. Recover from the AutoRecover folder...Full steps
Method 2. Recover from the Temp folder...Full steps
Method 3. Recover from the previous version...Full steps

Part 1. How to Recover Lost/Deleted PowerPoint on Mac

If your PowerPoint files are lost due to deletion, formatting, or other misoperations, you get a rather high chance to get them back with the help of the effective data recovery software for Mac — EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard.

There are lots of data recovery tools, but to achieve the best PPT/PPTX recovery result, you need to choose a reliable one. Considering the product quality, usability, and versatility, we recommend you try EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. It is the most powerful Mac data recovery software which works perfectly well to recover files such as Microsoft Office Word/Excel/PowerPoint files, pictures, videos, etc. from your local computer hard drives and removable storage devices.

To guarantee a maximum PowerPoint recovery result on Mac, try not to overwrite the lost files by saving new data to the drive where the PPT files had lost. Now, download the software and follow the guide to start performing PowerPoint recovery on your Mac.

Steps to recover accidentally deleted PowerPoint on Mac:

Step 1. Scan for lost documents

Select the location where your important Word/Excel/PPT/Numbers/Pages documents were lost and click "Search for lost files".

select a location and scan for lost documents on Mac

Step 2. Find lost documents on Mac

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac will immediately start a scan on your selected disk volume. Meanwhile, the scanning results will be presented in the left pane. Select "Documents" and you can quickly filter the DOC/PDF/PPT/XLS files you've lost earlier.

choose the lost documents

Step 3. Recover lost/deleted documents

Select the target files and preview them by double-clicking them. Then, click "Recover" to get lost documents back at once.

recover lost documents from Mac

Part 2. How to Recover Unsaved PowerPoint on Mac

"My computer crashed and I lost my school assignment which took me two weeks. This is the story. Last night, when I was working with the Mac it suddenly crashed and was forced to quit. After I performed a force restart, I couldn't find my PPT. Anywhere. My mac was supposed to save it automatically but it didn't. I'm so pissed off! How can I recover my PowerPoint files on a Mac crashed without saving them?"

Like recovering unsaved Word documents on Mac, there are three potential ways to recover unsaved Microsoft Office PowerPoint files. If you are in a similar situation like the one above, you can recover your unsaved PowerPoint files with the help of AutoRecover (Method 1). The other chance to get your PPT files back is to find the item in the Temp folder on your Mac (Method 2). Follow the two solutions to have a try.

Method 1: Recover Unsaved PowerPoint Files from AutoRecover Folder

AutoRecover, a built-in feature in Microsoft Office, is able to restore your PPT files after a system crash. It will save a copy of your PowerPoint in the background every 10 minutes (by default). Thus, it's possible to find the backup of your desired PowerPoint in the AutoRecover folder. Usually, Microsoft Office will restore your work the next time you open it following a system crash. If you need it, just save it to your Mac. If that doesn't work on your Mac, follow the steps below to manually find the AutoRecovered files on your Mac:

Step 1. Click "Go" > "Go to Folder".

Step 2. Go to the autosave folder location by navigating to: /Users/Library/Containers/com.Microsoft.Powerpoint/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery.

recover unsaved powerpoint mac from autorecover location

Step 3. If you find the file you need, open it with Microsoft Office and save it on your computer.

Notice:
If you unsaved your PowerPoint file by clicking "Don't Save", the AutoRecovered files will be deleted because Office thinks that they are not needed. If that's how you make your PPT files unsaved, this method will not work for you.

Method 2. Recover Unsaved PowerPoint Files using EaseUS File Recovery Software

EaseUS file recovery software also offers a great feature for you to recover unsaved PowerPoint from its history versions. Download and apply it to recover your unsaved PowerPoint files now:

Step 1. Select the disk

Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac, hover the mouse over the device where you lost an unsaved file, and click "Search for lost files".

select a location and scan for unsaved documents

Step 2. Choose unsaved documents

After the scan, click "Type", and expand "Unsaved Documents". Click the exact file type - Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Keynote, Pages, or Numbers you lost without saving.

choose the unsaved documents

Step 3. Preview and recover unsaved files

Double-click to preview your unsaved file, select the right version and click "Recover" to save the file to another secure location on Mac.

recover unsaved documents on Mac

Method 3. Recover Unsaved PowerPoint Files from Temp Folder

Step 1. Go to "Applications" > "Utilities" and double-click "Terminal".

Step 2. In Terminal, enter open $TMPDIR and you will be directed to the TMP folder which is used to keep files temporarily.

Step 3. In the TMP folder, find and open the folder named "TemporaryItems". In it, right-click the desired unsaved PowerPoint file and open it with Microsoft PowerPoint.

Step 4. Save the Word file by clicking on "File" > "Save As" and save it to another location.

Method 4. Recover Unsaved and Overwritten PowerPoint Files from Older Versions

At last, if you set up a regular Time Machine backup on your Mac, you may be fortunate to restore the previous version of the lost PowerPoint files that were deleted, corrupted, overwritten, and unsaved.

Step 1. Go to Finder and open the folder where the disappeared PowerPoint file was located.

Step 2. Select Enter Time Machine from the Time Machine menu to find the Time Machine backups you created.

Step 3. Filter a time before the PowerPoint file was lost, corrupted, or overwritten. Click on the file and then click Restore.

Honestly speaking, if the three methods above can't help you recover your unsaved PowerPoint files, you may not be able to get them back anymore. To prevent such terrible things from happening, you should grow a good habit of saving your files frequently or, at least, decrease the Auto-Save interval. However, if your PPT file has been saved before but was missing after a system crash, using the data recovery for Mac to recover it is well worth trying.

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Updated by Cedric

Cedric Grantham is one of the senior editors of EaseUS who lives and works in Chengdu, China. He mainly writes articles about data recovery tutorials on PC and Mac and how-to tips for partition management. He always keeps an eye on new releases and loves various electronic products.

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Written by Daisy

Daisy is the Senior editor of the writing team for EaseUS. She has been working in EaseUS for over ten years, starting from a technical writer to a team leader of the content group. As a professional author for over 10 years, she writes a lot to help people overcome their tech troubles.

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