By Achilles Hill | Last Updated
WordPad is a simple text editor. It is also a free text editor program from Microsoft Windows that you can use to create and edit letters, notes, and posters. However, due to equipment failure, crashed programs, sudden shutdown, virus or malware infection, and disk formatting, if you encounter any of these problems while editing a WordPad document, you may lose it before saving it. In this article, I will guide you step by step on the most effective ways to recover unsaved WordPad documents in Windows 10 & 11 and answer your frequently asked questions(FAQ) about WordPad.
All incomplete, unsaved or improperly closed files or documents are stored in a temp folder a period of time. These files are created automatically when a different file is created in the WordPad program. Therefore, you can follow these steps to recover a WordPad document after a crash.
Step 1: Use WIN+E to open the File Explorer, and navigate to the following path. (Note: Replace the Username with your actual username.)
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Temp
Step 2: Click the Date modified option to view the most recent files by date.
Step 3: Copy WordPad documents and paste them in a location where they stay secure.
Step 4: Change the file name extension to .odt, which is the default file name extension for WordPad documents. This way can successfully recover unsaved WordPad documents.
Before using this method, you need to know where you saved your WordPad document and the "System Protection" feature should be enabled in your Windows 10/11 laptop or PC.
Step 1: Open the original location where your WordPad document was saved. Nevertheless, if you lost the whole folder, create a new folder and name it the original one.
Step 2: Right-click on the original or newly created folder where the WordPad documents are missing and select Properties.
Step 3: Click on the Previous Versions tab, all versions will be listed here. Select the version you need and click Restore.
WordPad doesn't have an autosave function, but don't worry, you can choose to download a reliable data recovery program to recover WordPad documents. Tenorshare 4DDiG is a highly recommended file recovery software that is capable of recovering files in all situations.
WordPad and Microsoft Word are both word processing tools. They differ in many aspects.
Function: Microsoft Word has more features than WordPad, for instance, grammar checking.
Format: Microsoft Word files are saved in docx format by default and have more available formats, while WordPad files are saved in rtf format by default.
On the whole, Word is more advanced than WordPad and has more features. WordPad's functions are a little simpler.
WordPad documents can be saved as rtf/docx/odt/txt. By default, WordPad saves files in rtf format, also known as Rich Text Format.
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