Use Excel’s recovery entries first when a workbook was never saved or recent edits disappeared after a crash. A recovery copy must have been created before the loss. If no such copy exists, enabling AutoRecover now cannot retrieve cells that never reached storage.
Open available recovery entries
For Microsoft 365 Excel on Windows, reopen Excel after the unexpected shutdown and inspect Document Recovery if it appears. Open candidates and use Save As to give useful versions distinct names. Keep the original entries until you know which contains the required calculations.
For work that was never saved, select File > Info > Manage Workbook > Recover Unsaved Workbooks. Select an available candidate, inspect it, and save it as a normal workbook. See Recover an earlier version of an Office file.
If an existing saved workbook lost recent edits, inspect the versions listed under Manage Workbook, including any entry for a session closed without saving. Preserve a useful candidate separately before using a restore command that replaces the current state.
Locate the configured recovery folder
Open File > Options > Save and note the actual AutoRecover location, interval and whether recovery was enabled. Browse that location in File Explorer. The installation may use a customized folder; relying on a path from a different computer can miss its records.
The retained content is limited to what Excel wrote successfully before the failure. A long interval, a crash before the first snapshot, disabled recovery, cleanup or a failed write can leave no suitable record. Microsoft describes AutoRecover settings in Help protect your files in case of a crash.
Check cloud versions separately
If the workbook had already been stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, check its version history under the correct account. This is a separate source from a local AutoRecover record. A never-saved local workbook does not have cloud version history merely because Excel was signed in. Use the overwritten-workbook guide when the problem is a saved unwanted revision.
Verify calculations before relying on them
Open the saved recovery copy without enabling unfamiliar macros or refreshing external data. Inspect the expected sheets, final entries and several formulas whose outcomes you know. Check missing rows, formulas that became values, charts and external links relevant to the workbook. Save under an appropriate format: converting an XLSM to XLSX can discard macros even if the original workbook survived.
If only an earlier candidate survives, identify its cutoff and reconstruct later edits from reliable records. Do not silently use an old total as the final answer. XRecovery can search readable storage for remaining workbook files and repair listed Excel formats, but neither route proves that an absent recovery snapshot was ever created.
For the next step, see Document Recovery: Deleted, Unsaved, Overwritten or Damaged?.