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how do I recover an excel file

NAHWA HUSNA SALIKAH 0 Reputation points
2026-03-27T15:27:05.0266667+00:00

hi, can anyone help me? I opened an excel file from WhatsApp and edit it right away, after I finished it, I save it, the day after that I opened it again just to see and I basically save it again. but today when I open it I can't open it and there is sign "workbook either deleted or not currently accessible", I use Mac and I already saw a tutorial in yt but it doesn't work. is it possible I got my excels file back? ;(

basically below the file name I can't open, there's some kind of instruction(?) like users>>(my username)>>library>>containers>>net.whatsAPP.WhatsaAPP>>Data>>tmp>>documents>> (and I assumes this is like some kind of my file name but its contains number and alphabets. trust me I already try this but I can't find anything. thank you

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For education | MacOS

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  1. Ryan-N 13,335 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2026-03-27T15:49:01.58+00:00

    Hi @NAHWA HUSNA SALIKAH,

    Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A forum.

    I would like to provide you with the following information:

    I see that you have tagged your post as Education, so I will provide information based on an Education account.

    Normally, data associated with Education accounts is managed, stored, and configured by the school’s administrators. In this case, you can contact your school’s IT department for assistance in checking whether the data can be recovered from the Admin Console.

    However, before contacting the IT department, please try the following steps to see if the issue can be resolved:

    1. Check whether the file is saved in OneDrive
    1. Check your access permissions to the file

    You mentioned that you opened this file via WhatsApp. In this case, please contact the person who sent you the file and check whether you still have permission to access it.

    If you are still unable to recover the file after completing the two steps above, I recommend that you contact your school’s IT department as soon as possible so they can help check the possibility of data recovery from the Admin Console.

    I hope this information is helpful. Please follow these steps and let me know if it works for you. If not, we can work together to resolve this.   

    Thank you for your patience and your understanding. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to share them in the comments on this post so I can continue to support you.

    I look forward to continuing the conversation.

     If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment". 

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