[Answered] How to Recover Documents in Open Office?

What is OpenOffice used for?

OpenOffice.org refers to OpenOffice, which is an open-source office suite that has since been discontinued. But there are several active successor projects available, including LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice, Collabora Online (enterprise-ready LibreOffice), and NeoOffice.

OpenOffice offered a range of applications such as Writer (a word processor), Calc (a spreadsheet application), Impress (a presentation tool), Draw (a drawing application), Math (a formula editor), and Base (a database management application).

Additionally, OpenOffice had the capability to read various file formats, with particular emphasis on those utilized by Microsoft Office.

How to recover lost Open Office documents?

Have you ever experienced a system crash while you were engrossed in an OpenOffice document? Or have you ever mistakenly or permanently deleted OpenOffice documents? Please read on how to recover documents in Open Office.

Method 1. Recover unsaved Open Office documents via AutoRecovery

Does OpenOffice have an AutoSave feature? Yes, it does.

To prevent users from closing a Word without saving it, OpenOffice offers a dependable AutoSave feature, which can automatically save backup copies of your documents or files at regular time intervals.

Please note that only an activated AutoSave feature can help you recover unsaved Open Office documents. Microsoft Office’s AutoSave feature also can recover unsaved Word documents. These steps describe how to recover unsaved Open Office documents.

Step 1. Start your OpenOffice Writer program > click Tools > select Options > go to Load/Save.

Step 2. Please go to the default saved path of AutoRecover backups:

C\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice.org/Version number\User\Backup

If you can’t find AppData files, please get more details on another page.

Step 3. Press Win + E to open File Explorer and access your backup directory. You can open your desired backup and save the recovered OpenOffice document to this location.

Method 2. Recover deleted/lost Open Office documents via document recovery software

Though the AutoSave feature in OpenOffice proves reliable in cases of program crashes and system errors, it does have certain limitations.

Because AutoSave might fail to locate your OpenOffice document, especially if it has become corrupted or accidentally deleted.

In such circumstances, it is advisable to turn to professional data recovery software like MyRecover to recover deleted and missing Open Office documents from computer hard drives if there’s no accessible backup.

Notes:✎...   

Please avoid writing new files to your Windows computer because any newly added data can overwrite the deleted/lost Open Office documents. Once overwritten, it can decrease the document recovery rate.  

After the Open Office document recovery, please store your retrieved documents in a new path.

MyRecover offers unlimited times for you to recover 30 MB of files for free. If you only need to recover one Open Office file within 30 MB, you do not need to pay for it.   

To recover a large number of deleted/missing files from local hard drives, upgrading MyRecover is a better and more cost-effective choice.

Step 1. Install and launch MyRecover on your Windows> hover the mouse over the C drive > click Scan.

Step 2. MyRecover will automatically run Quick and Deep Scan to scan your selected C drive and display all the recoverable files.

You can preview or filter your needed Open Office documents according to Document Type, Name, Date, Path, or Size.

• Name: Type the filenames of your desired files to narrow the search area.
• Date modified: Set the date (today, yesterday, last 7/30 days, etc.)
• Size: Filter the file size (<128KB, 128KB~1MB, 1MB~ 512MB, etc.)

Step 3. Go to the Deleted Files/Recycle Bin/Other Missing Files folder and select your needed Open Office documents. Then click the “Recover x files” button.

Method 3. Restore deleted/lost Open Office documents via Previous Versions

On the other hand, if you’ve made regular backups with Windows features, it’s possible for you to restore your wanted OpenOffice documents.

Let’s take Previous Versions as an example because this built-in Windows feature is designed to restore older or earlier OpenOffice files according to the timeline.

Please ensure you’ve activated File History or the System Protection of the local disk drive that saves your needed OpenOffice files. If not, this solution cannot work for you.

Previous Versions also can help you recover overwritten PowerPoint files on Windows 10/11.  

Step 1. Press Win + E to open Windows File Explorer > right-click on the folder that contains your OpenOffice files before data loss > select Properties.

Step 2. Under the Previous Versions tab, select a document version according to its time or importance.

Step 3. You can “Restore” it to the previously saved path. If you want to change a saved path, right-click on Restore > select Restore to.

Related tips about document recovery

This passage offers several ways for you to recover OpenOffice documents. For unsaved OpenOffice documents, enabling the AutoSave feature in the recovery process is essential.

For deleted OpenOffice documents, using professional document recovery software is more reliable and effective, improving its document recovery rate.

In addition, there’re some relevant tips about Open Office document recovery.