How to recover an unsaved Word document?

I was right in the middle of finishing up a document in Word when my computer just died on me—I’m actually fuming. It looks like nothing autosaved and there’s no trace of where the file went. When I check my recent files, all I see is an old version with just one subheading, even though I had typed out at least twenty more in the meantime.
Is there any way at all to recover this document? 😢It feels like such a massive waste of effort to have all that writing just vanish into thin air... plus, I desperately need this finished by the end of the day. 🙂🙂🙂
In case it matters, I'm using an old Asus laptop, which honestly feels like total junk right now.
Please, if anyone knows what to do, help me out!!!

Just to add—I can’t even find anything when I go looking through the tutorials under manage, save, or temporary files...
The other two documents saved just fine, but one of them has completely vanished into thin air.
And to top it all off, my autosave folder is totally empty.

Unfortunately, there isn't much I can do to help fix this one. Just a heads-up for next time: try to stick strictly to the rules. It’s always a good idea to save your work frequently, and honestly, I’ve learned the hard way to copy the document somewhere else before making any major changes just in case things go sideways. It’s definitely better to hit save before you even start printing. At the end of the day, try backing everything up to an external drive, a thumb drive, or even just using the cloud. For example, if you upload it to Google Drive, you can access it from anywhere—whether you're at a FedEx Office, a local library, or on the go. ☕

Oh, sure, yeah...

I think there’s some supposed "setting" buried in the menu somewhere to turn on this "autosave mode." Or maybe I just dreamed that up myself.. 🤦

So high-tech, right? I'm just glad they finally remembered to build something so incredibly cutting-edge for us mere mortals who actually use the software. It only took about 150 years since Word first showed up... because back in the beginning, there was "Word"... 🙂

Hahaha, honestly, you're right—there’s just no way to track anything down when Windows or Word decides to ignore your settings entirely. I actually have my autosave set to trigger every five minutes, mostly because I know myself and how often I forget to hit save manually. But apparently, the software chooses to go on strike more often than it actually follows orders.
I managed to salvage about a third of the document—basically everything from the last successful autosave or my own manual save a couple of days ago. Everything else? Just gone. Poof.
It really feels like technological progress hasn't changed much; the only difference is that instead of saving everything to a floppy disk, we're now dumping it onto an external hard drive.

@Karen Ortiz83, you’ve gotta trust your own gut more than you trust any piece of tech. Just hit save, back it up somewhere secure, and then you can actually get some sleep... 🙂

For next time, you might want to set up version history.

ironcyclist58 said:For next time, you might want to set up version history.

🙏🙏🙏
Honestly, this could have saved my life—well, my work, anyway—next time. I didn't even realize this feature existed... or maybe someone configured it for me during my Windows installation? Either way, it was working in the background without me even knowing it was there. Thanks so much!!! 🙂

Just a heads-up, you’re gonna need some extra space on an external drive or maybe just clear out some room on your internal one.

Honestly, why even bother with version history? I mean, what's the real point if you just set up Word to auto-save every minute or so anyway.
I’ve been doing things that way for years now—and honestly, I haven’t run into a single issue yet.