How to recover unsaved documents in ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors

In ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors, you can easily bring back documents and spreadsheets lost due to app crash or involuntary shutdown of your computer. Here’s how.

How does document recovery work?

When you create or open a document in ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors, a copy of the document is created in the recovery folder and automatically updated after you finish editing.

The Autorecover option is responsible for this in the editors. It is located in the File > Advanced Settings menu in the Editing and saving section.

It is enabled by default and recovery files are saved on your disk in the following folder, depending on your operating system:

Windows: %LocalAppData%\ONLYOFFICE\DesktopEditors\data\recover

Linux: /home/{user}/.local/share/onlyoffice/desktopeditors/recover

macOS: Users/%UserName%/Library/Application Support/asc.onlyoffice.ONLYOFFICE/recovery

While you are editing your document, all changes you make are automatically recorded in the database and saved in …/recover/{any_foder}/changes folder. This happens 3 seconds after you finish editing the file, namely stop input in a text document or move to another cell in a spreadsheet.

You can recover the unsaved files from the available recovery copies inside ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors app.

What happens when the app is shut down incorrectly?

When the app is shut down incorrectly, for instance, when the app crashes or involuntary shutdown of a computer occurs due to power outage or other problems, changes in files saved on your system drive remain in the recover directory. You can later recover those files using the recovery feature.

Are recovery files available when I close the app normally?

When you attempt to close the app and some of the current files have not been saved, you will be prompted to save the changes or close the files without saving.

Depending on the chosen action, the changes will be normally saved in the file or discarded. In either case, the recovery files will be deleted from your computer permanently.

How to recover a document

To recover an unsaved file from a copy, go to Recent files >> Recover files and select a file to recover.

Note: After recovering a file, in order to retain the unsaved changes, you must save the changes in the file manually.

Can I configure the file recovery process?

At the moment, you cannot change any file recovery settings. However, we consider introducing the configurable autosave for recovery files and manual selection of the recovery folder path in the future releases.

How to restore file versions in ONLYOFFICE DocSpace

If you are using ONLYOFFICE DocSpace to work with documents in the cloud, and happen to lose important edits in a document, you can restore it from the version history. Watch our tutorial to learn how: