Sometimes a Microsoft Office program closes unexpectedly before you can save changes. Two possibilities occur:

• The program opens the file so you can continue your work. Or
• The Document Recovery task pane appears, with up to three recovered versions of your document. You can identify a version to keep.

 Note   If the Document Recovery task pane does not appear in your document, try the following help topics:

• Automatically save and recover Office files
• Save and recover a backup copy of a document
• Demo: Up to speed with Word 2007

Use the Document Recovery task pane

When a document closes unexpectedly, sometimes the Document Recovery task pane appears with one to three available files that you can save.

Use the following instructions to work with the Document Recovery pane, when it appears.

For each file, you can select Open, Save As, or Delete.

1. In the Available files list, click the down-arrow.
• Click Open to review the the recovered version of the document.
• Click Save As to re-name and create a new version the document.
• Click Delete to delete this recovered version of your document.
2. Save and keep the recovered document you want.

 Tip   If the Document Recovery task pane makes it harder to see your file, click Recovered on the status bar to close the task pane. Click Recovered again to open the task pane.

 Note   To decrease the chances of losing work again, see Avoid losing work when an Office program closes abnormally.

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