Word 5.1 for Mac OS, released in 1992, was a very popular word processor owing to its elegance, relative ease of use and feature set. Many users say it is the best version of Word for Mac OS ever created. In 1986, an agreement between Atari and Microsoft brought Word to the Atari ST under the name Microsoft Write. Browse, restore, duplicate, and delete versions On your Mac, open the document, then choose File Revert To Browse All Versions. Click tick marks along the timeline to browse versions. Display the version you want, then do one of the following.

• Older Versions Of Word For Mac
• Microsoft Word For Mac Older Version
• Free Old Version Of Microsoft Word For Mac
• Old Version Of Word For Mac

Word is a great processor for users to create documents. However, there are some problems while creating or editing Word documents, like unsaved the Word doc while the computer is shut down, or need the previous version of Word doc, or want to recover deleted Word document on Mac. Here in the following, we covered several ways for how to recover Word document on Mac. You can download the tool to do the task efficiently.

'How do I restore a previous version of a Word document on Mac or recover unsaved Word document on Mac? A few minutes ago, my office suddenly shut down automatically. Today, I added the charts is gone. I really hope there is any way to help me.'

like these Disasters happen every day! If you’re looking for how to recover a Word document on Mac, you’re in the right place. This article covers all the detailed guides to recover previous version of Word document on Mac with Office history versions, restore unsaved Word document on Mac from AutoRecover folder and use the professional software to retrieve deleted Word document on Mac. You just need to skip to the right part you’re looking for and follow the steps there to achieve your goal. Let’s start to Mac Word recovery now!

Quick Navigation

Part 1. How to Recover Previous Version of Word Document on Mac for Free

Part 2. How to Restore Unsaved Word on Mac

Part 3. How to Recover Word Document on Mac after Deleted/Lost

Part 1. How to Recover Previous Version of Word Document on Mac for Free

To be honest, the theory for how to recover previous version of Word document on Mac is similar to the autoSave/autoRecover in Microsoft Word. In fact, whenever you edit , duplicate, delete or make a change of a Word document, Microsoft Word will automatically save the previous version there for you, in case you need the previous version. Here are the steps to recover lost word document on Mac:

A: Recover an old version of Word document on Mac from Office 365

Office 365 is the latest version of Microsoft's Office software. It provides a web service that allows multiple people to collaborate on a task. Therefore, it can better manage the historical version of the Word document. If you're using it and want to Mac Word restore the previous version. You just click the name of the file on the title bar, then select 'Browse Version History' to view all the previous version of Word Doc.

B: Recover previous of Word document on Mac from Office 2011/2016/2018/2020

The old version of Microsoft Office is a native program that allows only one user to use it, and different versions have different ways of finding the previous version of the Word document on Mac.

Older Versions Of Word For Mac

Open the current Word document, If you're using Office 2016 or 2020 for Mac, please click 'File' > 'Browse Version History'.

If you use another version, please click 'File' > 'Restore' > 'Browse Version History'.

Note: Compared with the previous version, if you haven’t done many changes for the current Word document, you can back to it by pressing the Command + Z buttons at the same time. It helps you undo the changes and recover previous version of Word document on Mac.

Part 2. How to Recover Unsaved Word Document on Mac

Microsoft Word For Mac Older Version

There are many scenarios that caused the issue of unsaved Word document: shut down Mac without saving the Word document; the Microsoft Word program crashed and not responsive so that you have to quit it without saving the document; the computer crashed, and you haven’t had time to save the word document at all. Please calm down. It is not a big deal for not being able to save Word document, because solutions available for you to recover unsaved Word document on Mac. First, please note that Microsoft Office has arranged the Word document recovery Mac solution in case of any the up-mentioned scenarios happen. It comes with 2 built-in features: AutoRecover and AutoSave.

AutoRecover allows you to recover Word document not saved on Mac which you have edited for more than once. It refers to recover the unsaved Word files which you haven’t saved after making changes on it more than once. This feature appears the next time open the Word document, popping up a reminder, asking you whether you’d like to restore the current Word to the last saved version or not. It’s up to you for restoring to which version.

AutoSave is a built-in tool that automatically saves a new document that you have created but not saved yet. It is enabled by default on your Microsoft Word on Mac. Here are the steps for how to use AutoSave to recover unsaved Word document on Mac.

1. Select 'Go' > 'Go to Folder' in the top menu. Then input '/Users/(username)/Library/Containers/com.Microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery' to view the unsaved files.

2. Select the auto-saved Word document, copy it to a location on your Mac. At this point, you have successfully recover Word document not saved on Mac.

If you unexpected close other Office applications without saving files on Mac? Don't worry, You can also use the above method to recover unsaved excel file on Mac and recover PowerPoint on Mac.

Part 3. How to Recover Deleted/Lost Word Document on Mac

If you haven’t done any Word document deletion, then you can try Part 1 or Part 2 to Word recovery on Mac. However, if you have lost the Word documents on Mac due to deleted, formatted drive, or emptied the trash, etc, then you should try the following ways to recover deleted Word document on Mac.

Ways 1: Recover Deleted Word Document on Mac from Trash

If you have deleted the Word document, you should know that it is first put into Trash Can. And the validated period for it to stay is 30 days. You can open the trash can, find and select it, and click 'Restore' to save it to the original place. You can also try the spotlight on the very top right if you have remembered its name, search there, find it and drag it to the desktop. If you empty the Mac trash or permanently delete, formatted drive or other reasons due to a lost word file on Mac, you can free try the tool to recover Word document on Mac.

Free Old Version Of Microsoft Word For Mac

Ways 2: Recover Permanently Deleted Word Document on Mac

To restore lost Word Document on Mac with software. It is the most efficient way to recover Word document on Mac for lost or delete files are invisible, you can’t do anything to them without a tool. iBeesoft Data Recovery for Mac is such a tool that allows you to scan and recover deleted photos, documents, emails, videos and more from Mac or removable drives. Here are the simple steps for how to recover Word document on Mac.

Your Effective Recover Word Document Mac Software

• It can recover Word document on Mac due to accidentally deleted, empty trash, formatted hard disk, virus attack, reinstallation or Mac OS X upgrade etc.
• Ability to preview missing files to ensure Mac Word document recovery quality.
• Supports recover Word file from almost all storage devices, such as hard drives, memory cards, digital cameras, players, USB drives and more.

Step-by-step Guide for How to Recover a Word Document on Mac

First of all, please download the latest version of the Word recovery Mac tool by clicking the download button below. Install it as the way you install other software on your Mac.

1. Run the software on your Mac. From the main window, you can see all the supported files are selected, the recover word document Mac tool is ready to scan for them. You need to uncheck them, only keep the 'Documents' option selected and click 'Start' to select your drive.

2. All storage devices, as well as external hard drives connected to your Mac, are listed there. Please select the one where you have deleted or lost the Word files and click 'Scan'. A recover Word documents Mac progress bar will tell you how it goes on with the scanning process.

3. It only takes a few minutes for this program to scan for the deleted or lost files. After then, you can see the found Word Doc in the result window. Find the one you need and click 'Recover' to save Word documents on your Mac or other drives.

Download iBeesoft Data Recovery for Mac to recover Word Document on Mac!

I am afraid this 'hint' is simply incorrect. I have old Word 3/4 documents from 1988/1989 that Word 2011 (or Word 2008 for that matter) is simply unable to open, no matter which option I choose. When I try to open them, Word throws a 'Convert File' dialog box asking me to choose a file format to convert from, but 'Word 3 document' and 'Word 4 document' are not listed as options and 'Rich Text Format' does not work.

There is also an option called 'Recover text from any file' (which is apparently a file format in MS's parlance) but it fails to preserve accented characters, so even that option is useless. For such files, my only option is to force-open them in TextEdit, which at least preserves the accents. (Take that, Microsoft.)

Word 2011 is indeed able to open Word 5 documents, but not via double-click or drag-and-drop. You are obliged to go through the Open File dialog box for each file. If you make sure that the file name includes '.doc', you don't have to use any special options to open them. (Be aware, however, that some Word 5 documents will cause Word 2011 to crash or freeze, presumably because of the nature of some of their contents, so you have no guarantee here either.)

Microsoft's inability to support its own older file formats is scandalous, but we are used to such disregard for usability and data integrity from the world's biggest software developers, I am afraid.

In light of these shortcomings in Word 2011 and Lion's lack of support for older versions of Word, I made sure to convert all my older Word documents before upgrading to Lion:

'Getting ready for Lion: Converting old files'
http://www.betalogue.com/2011/07/14/lion-oldfiles/

Pierre

Old Version Of Word For Mac