Accidentally saved edited document before closing

Accidentally saved edited document before closing instead of using Save As. Now I am missing a lot of what I had written. Is there any way to recover what was lost? Backup feature wasn’t on - didn’t know about that feature until after mishap - and same with Time Machine. Using Mac Mountain Lion os x.

Are there any overwritten docx recovery programs that can help me? Also have read about “versions”, but how does that work?

Really hope I can get help with this.

L.

Unfortunately, I don’t think your data can be restored. Versions helps by saving multiple versions of a document within the same document. You can view previous versions of the document and merge changes if necessary. The help for the Versions feature is here:

Versions - LibreOffice Help

See also → Tagged “versioning”.

(As far as I remember, "Versions" is not available in Writer for ".doc/.docx".)

I tried using “versions”, but that feature wasn’t available to access. I found an older saved version with some of the text that was lost and was able to recreate the lost bits from memory. Not perfect, but the only option. Is there a way to activate “versions” or something, because it is not available now.

Thanks.

The Versions feature can be accessed by going to File > Versions. Is that available on your system? You also have to save a ‘Version’ before it will be available to go back to when needed. Also see the comment above by @manj_k. Your documents need to be saved using one of the ODF file formats for it to work.

I recommend to follow the proposal of @rmfaile AND to back up your HDD every days or every other day. By doing so you always have an older version backed up.