Excel keeps more copies than you think
- AutoRecover — File → Info → Manage Workbook → Recover Unsaved Workbooks. By default Excel saves a recovery copy every 10 minutes, so you rarely lose more than that.
- Previous versions — right-click the file (or its folder) in Windows Explorer and check Restore previous versions, which reads File History or restore points if either is enabled.
- Cloud version history — OneDrive, SharePoint and Google Drive all keep prior versions of a workbook, which is the fastest fix when someone saved over your numbers.
If the workbook was deleted rather than mangled, none of the above will have it — move on to a scan.
Deleted vs overwritten — they are different problems
Deleted means the file's space was marked reusable but the bytes are still there until something else claims them. That is recoverable, and the sooner you scan the better.
Overwritten means new data was physically written on top — someone saved a different workbook over yours, or the same file was re-saved with the numbers wiped. No recovery tool can undo that, and any tool promising otherwise is not being straight with you. For overwritten files your only real hope is version history or a backup.
Which scan finds spreadsheets
- Quick Scan on NTFS — reads the Master File Table and returns workbooks with their original names and folders. For spreadsheets this is a big deal: 2026-budget-v3.xlsx is meaningful, file0042.xlsx is not.
- Deep Scan — the default. Runs the Quick Scan, then carves the whole drive by signature for workbooks the file system has already forgotten.
- Carving Only — for USB sticks, SD cards and other FAT32/exFAT volumes with no MFT to read. Like .docx, .xlsx is a ZIP container of XML parts, so carved workbooks open in Excel normally — just without their original names.
Recovering without making it worse
The single biggest mistake is installing recovery software onto — or saving recovered files back to — the same drive you are trying to rescue. RecoverHelper blocks same-drive output so that cannot happen by accident, but you should still install to a different disk where possible.
If the drive is failing and some reads error out, bad-sector tolerance skips the unreadable areas and keeps scanning rather than stalling, so a dying disk still gives up most of its files.
Spreadsheets, documents, PDFs and archives are unlocked for free by pairing the free RecoverHelper mobile app. There is no paid tier.