Recovering an Excel or Word file you did not save
Three places to look before you accept that a morning of work has gone.
Office keeps several safety copies behind the scenes. Do this before restarting the computer, because some of the temporary locations get cleared on reboot.
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Check Recover Unsaved Documents
Open Excel, click File, Open, then scroll to the bottom of the recent files list and click Recover Unsaved Workbooks. In Word the button says Recover Unsaved Documents. Anything found opens as a read-only copy — use Save As immediately.
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Look at Manage Workbook versions
If the file was saved at least once, open it and go to File, Info. Under Manage Workbook you may find autosave versions from earlier in the session.
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Search the AutoRecover folder yourself
Press Windows key + R, paste %AppData%\Microsoft\Excel\ and press Enter. Sort by date modified and look for .xlsb or .asd files from today. Copy anything promising to your Desktop before opening it.
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Try OneDrive version history
If the file lives in OneDrive or SharePoint, right-click it in File Explorer or on the web and choose Version History. You can restore any earlier save, including from before a bad edit.
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Stop it happening again
Go to File, Options, Save and set AutoRecover to every 3 minutes, and tick "Keep the last autosaved version if I close without saving". Better still, save your working files into OneDrive so AutoSave runs continuously.