Can't find a file you just saved? Where to look on Windows and Mac

You clicked Save, closed the window, and now the file is nowhere to be found. Almost always the file isn't gone, it just landed somewhere you didn't expect: a different folder, a OneDrive copy of your Desktop, or a temp folder you've never heard of. And if you closed without saving at all, Office and several other apps may still have a draft tucked away. Work down this page in order; most people find the file in the first two minutes.

The short version: open the app you used and check File → Open → Recent, which shows the full path. If that fails, open This PC in File Explorer and search datemodified:today. Check whether OneDrive has taken over your Desktop and Documents. For a document you never saved, go to File → Info → Manage Document → Recover Unsaved Documents in Word (Excel and PowerPoint have the same thing), or search for *.asd. On a Mac, start with Recents in the Finder sidebar.

1. The 60-second checklist

Try these in order. Each takes a few seconds, and the first one fixes the problem more often than all the others put together.

1. Ask the app that saved it. In Word, Excel, Photoshop, Notepad++ and most other programs, File → Open → Recent (or File → Recent) lists what you worked on last. Office shows the folder path under each name; elsewhere, hover over the entry or right-click it for Open file location or Copy path to clipboard. The app remembers exactly where it wrote the file, even if you don't.
2. Check Recent in File Explorer. On Windows 11, open File Explorer and click Home; the Recent section lists files you opened lately. On Windows 10 it's under Quick access → Recent files. Right-click any entry → Open file location.
3. Open the full Recent items folder. Press Win+R, type recent (or shell:recent) and press Enter. This folder of shortcuts goes back much further than the Home view. Switch to Details view, sort by Date modified, and right-click the shortcut → Open file location.
4. Look in the three usual suspects. Downloads (anything from a browser or email), Desktop, and Documents. Sort each by Date modified, newest first.
5. Check OneDrive. If OneDrive is backing up your folders, the Desktop and Documents you see may not be the ones you think. See the next section.
6. Search the whole PC by date. Open File Explorer, click This PC in the left pane, click the search box and type datemodified:today. Add a type to cut the noise, like *.docx datemodified:today, then sort by Date modified.

That last search is the heavy lifter. It supports yesterday, this week, exact dates and ranges; the full syntax, and the mistakes that make it return nothing, are in our guide to finding recently modified files. You don't need to remember the syntax either: our search query builder writes it for you.

2. Why files "vanish": OneDrive folder redirection

This is the most common reason a file you definitely saved to the Desktop can't be found. When OneDrive's folder backup is switched on (Windows often suggests it during setup, and many people accept without noticing), Desktop, Documents and Pictures move from C:\Users\you\Desktop to C:\Users\you\OneDrive\Desktop. The next problems follow from that:

• You now have two Desktop folders: the old, empty one and the OneDrive one. An app with an old saved path, or a shortcut you pinned years ago, may open the wrong one.
• If you sign in on another PC, turn off backup, or unlink OneDrive, the files stay in the OneDrive folder and the "normal" Desktop looks empty. It looks like everything was deleted.
• Files set to online-only (the cloud icon) aren't on the disk. Windows Search still lists them, but some third-party tools and older apps don't.

To check, open File Explorer, right-click Desktop or Documents in the left pane → Properties → Location tab. If the path contains OneDrive, that's where your files live. You can also open the OneDrive icon in the taskbar → Settings → Sync and backup → Manage back up to see which folders are redirected. If the file isn't on this PC at all, sign in at onedrive.com and search there; a sync conflict sometimes leaves a copy with your PC's name appended, like Report-DESKTOP-4F2K.docx.

3. Recovering unsaved and AutoRecover files

If you closed without saving, or the app or PC crashed, the file you want may never have been written to its real location. Several apps keep drafts anyway.

Word, Excel and PowerPoint (Microsoft 365, 2016 and later)

1. Open the app and go to File → Info → Manage Document → Recover Unsaved Documents. In Excel it's Manage Workbook → Recover Unsaved Workbooks; in PowerPoint, Manage Presentation → Recover Unsaved Presentations. You'll also find a Recover Unsaved Documents button at the bottom of the File → Open → Recent list.
2. A folder opens showing any drafts Office kept. Open one and Save As right away.
3. After a crash, Office also shows a Document Recovery pane the next time you open the app. Save anything listed there before closing it.

Drafts only exist if AutoRecover was on (it is by default, saving every 10 minutes; check under File → Options → Save). Office also deletes unsaved drafts automatically after a few days, so don't wait. Files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint use AutoSave instead, which saves continuously, so for those go straight to version history.

Where the files actually live

If the menu comes up empty, look in the folders directly. Paste these into the File Explorer address bar:

These are defaults; if you or your IT department changed the AutoRecover file location in File → Options → Save, look there instead. Exact folder names vary a little between Office versions, so if one path doesn't exist, search for the file types below.

Which extensions to search for

• .asd is Word's AutoRecover file. Open it from Word (File → Open, set the type filter to All Files), not by double-clicking.
• .wbk is a Word backup copy, named Backup of name.wbk. These only exist if Always create backup copy is on (File → Options → Advanced → Save). They hold the previous saved version, which helps when you overwrote something.
• .tmp files, often with names like ~WRL0001.tmp, are scratch files Office writes while saving. After a crash one can contain your text; copy it somewhere, rename it to .docx or .xlsx, and try opening it. It doesn't always work.
• ~$ files (like ~$port.docx) are "owner" lock files that say who has the document open. They're tiny, hold none of your content, and aren't worth recovering. They do tell you which folder the real document was in, though.

Search for them from This PC in File Explorer, or instantly in Everything:

*.asd
ext:asd
*.wbk
ext:asd;wbk          (Everything: both at once)
~wrl*.tmp datemodified:today

Notepad on Windows 11

The current Windows 11 Notepad remembers open tabs, including unsaved ones, and restores them when you reopen it, as long as Settings → When Notepad starts → Continue previous session is selected. So just reopen Notepad before doing anything else. Its session data is stored in %LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsNotepad_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\TabState as binary files; they're not meant to be opened directly, but a tab's text is often readable if you open a copy in a hex or text editor. Classic Notepad on Windows 10 keeps nothing.

LibreOffice

After a crash, LibreOffice offers Document Recovery when it restarts. If you turned on Always create backup copy (Tools → Options → Load/Save → General), the previous version of each saved file sits in the backup folder shown under Tools → Options → LibreOffice → Paths → Backups. The default is %AppData%\LibreOffice\4\user\backup on Windows and ~/Library/Application Support/LibreOffice/4/user/backup on a Mac.

4. Restoring an overwritten or deleted file ("what did I change?")

Sometimes the file is right where it should be, but you saved over the good version, or deleted it while tidying up. Try these in order:

• Recycle Bin. Obvious, but check it first. Sort by Date deleted, right-click → Restore to put it back in its original folder. Files deleted from USB drives and network shares usually skip the Recycle Bin.
• OneDrive version history. For any file in OneDrive, right-click it → OneDrive → Version history (or open it on onedrive.com). You can open or restore earlier versions. Office files in OneDrive also have File → Info → Version History inside the app.
• OneDrive recycle bin. Deleted cloud files go to the recycle bin on onedrive.com, where they're kept for a limited time: about 30 days for personal accounts and longer for work or school accounts, depending on your organization's settings.
• Previous Versions / File History. Right-click the file (or the folder it was in) → Properties → Previous Versions. This tab only lists something if File History (Control Panel → File History) was already turned on, or if restore points happened to capture that drive. If you're lucky, you'll see dated copies you can open or restore.

To see what changed, open the old version alongside the current one. Word can do it for you: Review → Compare → Compare, pick the original and revised files, and you get a marked-up document showing every edit. For plain text and code, any diff tool (or fc in Command Prompt) does the same.

5. Searching every drive: Everything and PowerShell

Explorer's search can be slow outside indexed folders. The free tool Everything searches every file on every NTFS drive in real time. Type:

dm:today

then click the Date Modified column header so the newest file is at the top. The file you saved a minute ago will be at or near the top of the list, wherever it went, including AppData and temp folders Explorer tends to skip. Narrow it with a word or type: dm:today .docx, dm:last2hours budget.

No installs allowed? This PowerShell command lists the 30 most recently modified files anywhere in your user profile, skipping AppData (where apps churn through thousands of cache files):

Get-ChildItem $env:USERPROFILE -Recurse -File -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
  Where-Object { $_.FullName -notlike "$env:USERPROFILE\AppData\*" } |
  Sort-Object LastWriteTime -Descending |
  Select-Object -First 30 LastWriteTime, FullName

It can take a minute on a large profile. Remove the Where-Object line if you suspect the file ended up in a temp or AppData folder.

6. Finding files created in a date range

To list everything that arrived between, say, June 5 and June 30, search by created date rather than modified. Created is the date the file appeared on this disk, which also catches downloads and copies that kept an older modified date.

# File Explorer (from This PC or any folder; use your locale's date order)
datecreated:6/5/2026..6/30/2026

# Everything (ISO dates work regardless of locale)
dc:2026-06-05..2026-06-30

# PowerShell
Get-ChildItem $env:USERPROFILE -Recurse -File -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
  Where-Object { $_.CreationTime -ge [datetime]'2026-06-05' -and $_.CreationTime -lt [datetime]'2026-07-01' } |
  Sort-Object CreationTime |
  Select-Object CreationTime, FullName

Note the PowerShell cut-off is July 1 with -lt, so files created at any time on June 30 are included. If Explorer returns nothing, the date order is the usual culprit: on UK and European systems type datecreated:5/6/2026..30/6/2026.

7. On a Mac

The same logic applies: ask the app, check recents, then search by date. More detail is in our Mac file search guide.

• File → Open Recent in the app you used. In many apps you can then ⌘-click the title in the window's title bar to see the folder the file is in.
• Finder → Recents in the sidebar lists files you've opened or saved lately, newest first.
• Spotlight: press ⌘+Space and type date:today plus any word you remember. Or, in Terminal: mdfind 'kMDItemFSContentChangeDate >= $time.today'.
• iCloud Drive. If Desktop & Documents Folders sync is on, those folders live in iCloud Drive, the Mac equivalent of the OneDrive trap above.
• Autosave and Versions. Apple's apps (Pages, Numbers, TextEdit, Preview) save continuously; use File → Revert To → Browse All Versions to go back. Unsaved documents from sandboxed apps are kept in ~/Library/Containers/app-id/Data/Library/Autosave Information. Microsoft Word for Mac keeps AutoRecovery files in ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery. The Library folder is hidden: in Finder, choose Go → Go to Folder (⇧⌘G) and paste the path.
• Time Machine. Open the folder the file used to be in, then open Time Machine from the menu bar and step back through time to a version before it was overwritten or deleted.

Troubleshooting: still missing

• You opened it from an email attachment. Classic Outlook opens attachments from a hidden secure temp folder, typically %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Outlook\random-letters (older versions used a folder named OLK followed by random characters under Temporary Internet Files). If you edited the attachment and pressed Save, your changes went there, not into the email or your Documents. The exact path is stored in the registry value OutlookSecureTempFolder under HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Security. The folder is cleared out over time, so copy the file out as soon as you find it. Next time, save the attachment to a folder first and then open it.
• It went to a network drive or cloud folder. If the app's Recent list shows a \\server\ path, a mapped drive letter or a SharePoint/Teams URL, the file isn't on your PC and local searches won't find it. Search that location directly; see our guide to searching network drives.
• Windows Search skips the folder. Start-menu and Explorer searches only run fast on indexed locations, and some paths are excluded completely. If the file is in an odd place, search the folder directly or use Everything. To fix the index itself, see how to speed up and repair Windows Search.
• You don't know the name, but you remember a phrase. Search contents: content:"quarterly forecast" in Explorer, or a dedicated tool from our guide to searching inside files.
• The file is hidden or has an odd extension. In File Explorer turn on View → Show → Hidden items and File name extensions. A file saved as report.docx.txt won't turn up in a *.docx search.

FAQ