I lost an excel file today that was made on september 18 after my mac reloaded, how do I recover the file? It is not in any saved folders or in autorecover, any help is much appreciated thank you

Hi Kousha Razavi, thanks for reaching out and I’m really sorry to hear about the missing Excel file. I know how frustrating it can be to lose something you’ve worked on for weeks, so let’s go through a few steps that might help you recover it.

First, let’s check OneDrive
If your file was saved to OneDrive, there are a few places we can look:

Version History
Go to OneDrive Online, find the file (even if it’s empty now), right-click it, and choose Version History. You might be able to restore an earlier version from before the issue happened.

Recycle Bin
Still in OneDrive Online, check the Recycle Bin on the left sidebar. If the file was deleted during the reload, it might still be there and you can restore it.

Restore Your OneDrive
If you suspect something went wrong during sync or the reload, you can roll back your entire OneDrive to a previous date. Click the gear icon in OneDrive > Options > Restore your OneDrive and choose a date before the file disappeared.

Now let’s check Excel itself

Excel has a few built-in recovery features that might help:
AutoRecover Folder
Open Finder, press Shift + Command + G, and paste this path:

~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Library/Application Support/Microsoft

Look for any files with .xlsb or .xlsx extensions that might be your missing workbook.

Recover Unsaved Workbooks
Open Excel, go to File > Open > Recent, scroll down and click Recover Unsaved Workbooks. If Excel crashed or closed unexpectedly, it might have saved a temporary version here.

Version History in Excel

If AutoSave was turned on and the file was stored in OneDrive, you can also go to File > Info > Version History in Excel to restore a previous version.

Terminal Search for Temp Files

Open Terminal and type:

cd $TMPDIR

ls

Look for folders like com.microsoft.Excel and search for .tmp or .xlsb files. Sometimes unsaved workbooks end up here.
Check Mac Trash Open Trash and search for the file. If found, right-click and choose Put Back.

Let me know how it goes happy to help.

If you found the response helpful feel free to mark my answer as helpful, it might make it easier for others to find the solution too.

Best,
Carl