USB drives or pen drives have been developed to make sure that the life of their user is simplified to a great extent in storing various files. Though by nature, USB drives are handy and portable. However, they are vulnerable to many issues and problems that cause sensitive data loss. We often tend to save a lot of Office files like Excel files, PowerPoint presentations, and Word documents on the flash drive. Losing these files on the drive can be a nightmare especially when you no longer have the access to the original source.
If you are looking for methods to recover your lost or deleted MS Office documents from a USB drive then this information may as well be the perfect solution for you. USB drives are plug-and-play. This means a user might connect a USB drive to any number of computers and transfer a lot of data between them. Unfortunately, using the drive between multiple computers is a threat to data existing on the pen drive. For example, malware, unstable USB ports, corrupted flash drives, or deleted MS Office files. Data loss on USB can occur due to many reasons. Before moving ahead solutions let us first understand the common scenarios for data loss
Causes for Data loss of Office files on USB drive
- Abrupt interruptions while transferring files from USB
- Accidentally deletion or human errors
- Corruption or IO error of the USB storage device
- Formatting of the USB device
How to Recover My Deleted or Lost MS Office Files from USB?
- Recover Office files from Flash drive with CMD prompt
- Restore Office files from a USB drive through previous version option
- Perform Office Recovery from flash drive with Remo
Recover Office files from Flash drive with CMD prompt
- Connect your USB flash from which you lost or deleted Office files from
- Press Win + R and type cmd, press Command Prompt window opens
- Type: chkdsk E: / f and press Enter (Replace E with the drive letter of the USB drive from which lost office files from)
- Type:Y and hit Enter
- Type:E and press Enter again
- Type: E:\>attrib -h -r -s /s /d *.*and press Enter
- A new folder consisting of all recovered files is created in your USB drive. Copy them and save at a new location.
Restore Office files from USB drive through Previous Version option
Follow the below-listed steps to easily Recover your Office files from the USB drive through the Previous version Option
- Click on the Start option
- Go to This PC
- From here Right-click on the USB flash drive from which you have lost Office files
- Click on the Properties Option
- You will encounter the pop-up with an option saying Restore Default
- Click on that and check if your lost or deleted files are being retrieved from the Flash Drive
If all the above-listed methods have not worked well for you and you are looking for a reliable data recovery tool, Remo File Recovery tool is the most effective and reliable recovery utility
You can recover deleted or lost MS Office files from a USB drive using a file recovery tool that can detect all MS Office file formats such as .doc, .docs, .ppt, .pptx, .xls, .pst, .mbd. Integrated with high precision scan engines Remo is one such software that can perfectly recover lost or deleted MS Office files from the USB drive. In addition, the tool comes with a Recover Partition option that will assist you in recovering MS Office files even from damaged, corrupted, or formatted USB drives.
Steps to Recover MS Office Files from a USB drive
- Connect the USB drive from which you lost your Office files.
- Download and install Remo Recover 6.0
- Click on the USB drive from which lost Office files.
- Once you have chosen the drive you want to recover click on Scan
- The tool will automatically initiate Quick Scan. Once the Quick Scan is completed, the tool runs Deep Scan where it restores data sector by sector. Open the Dynamic Recovery View to easily recover the files simultaneously while the Deep Scan is running.
- You can also search for the specific file format in the search bar with the Advanced Filter option
- Now select the folder or file that you want to recover the drive from and click on the Recover option
- After the USB drive is scanned the recovered data will be presented to you which you can Preview.
- Choose the needed Office files, click on Save a browse for a location to save the recovered data.
That is all it takes, three simple steps to recover your lost or deleted data from a USB drive.
Precautions to Avoid MS Office File loss from USB flash Drive
There are numerous free cloud storage services available. Typically, any MS Office file doesn’t require a lot of space, so you can perfectly use a cloud storage space with a free account. If you don’t prefer storing on cloud storage, it better to safely maintain the USB flash drive and practice following precautions
- Regular defragmentation to avoid un-correctable storage sectors on your USB drive
- Scan for malware after using it on a different computer and keep your anti-virus updated all the time
Always maintain a backup copy of the most important files saved on your USB flash drive
