Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks
If you’ve ever lost a few paragraphs of fantastic work then you know you need to save regularly. No matter how hard you try however, it will probably happen again.
Thanks to the autosave feature in the Microsoft 365 version of Word, you can always find your lost document, even if you didn’t save it. The tricky part is that the app saves your documents in a format you may not be familiar with: .asd. Finding these files can be a bit tricky. Here’s a quick way to find them.
And stay tuned — I have a bonus tip for you, below, on how to make Word save your file once every minute so the most up-to-date version is always autosaved.
Start by pressing the Windows key on your keyboard.
Click on File Explorer.
Choose This PC in the left-hand menu.
Type .asd into the search bar and hit Enter on your keyboard. Your computer will start searching for this type of file. The search may take a few minutes, depending on how many files you have on your computer.
When it pops up, click on the file and when it opens in Word, save it as usual.
You can also alter where autosaves are stored so you don’t need to do the .asd file search. In Word 365, go to File tab > Options >Save.
By the AutoRecover file location option click on the Browse button. Choose whichever folder location makes the most sense to you. I chose my Documents folder. When you’re done, click OK.
Bonus tip: Change the AutoRecover time from 10 minutes to 1. This way you won’t lose much if the document closes out before the autosave kicks in. This option is right above the AutoRecover file option.
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