Restore a previous version of a Word file

Renata* :
I don’t think Time Machine is activated, since it’s asking me to set it up, and as I mentioned at the beginning of my message, there is no list of available storage (to store data from my Mac), it only offers to "set up an AirPort Time Capsule" - could you tell me why the other storage locations are not showing up and what is meant by "set up an AirPort Time Capsule"?

Time Machine activates as long as you specify a volume where it can install its backup architecture. The best (and safest) option is to dedicate an external drive that is about 50% larger (or more) than the startup disk.

If you don’t have an external hard drive (nor a “Time Capsule”, a network drive sold by Apple), that should be one of your concerns soon: given the price of drives, you really shouldn’t go without one, keeping in mind that a document that is not backed up is a worthless document. The more important you consider a document, the more you should ensure that you have a secure backup.

Time Machine is a good backup system, practical and very useful precisely when you want to recover a version overwritten by mistake. Personally, I double my Time Machine backup with regular archiving of my entire hard drive on a third medium (and my son-in-law, who uses his data professionally, maintains a third backup remotely, on a network drive, to be prepared in case of fire, flood, or burglary!)

That said, if you haven’t activated Time Machine, there’s no need to look for data recovery. You can still use a tool for recovering deleted data from a drive. They are often paid (except for PhotoRec, and maybe one or two others) and don’t necessarily allow you to find what you’re looking for among the recovered files (which are unorganized and have generic names). In short, you’re likely to spend more time trying to locate the data than re-entering what you’re missing...

Renata* :
I found the "library" (thank you for your clarification on how to find it). After following ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft => it offers me 3 folders (May2.0, MERP2.0, Silverlight), none of these folders contain "Office Auto Recovery."

A priori, it’s not the user account Library that you "found" but the one at the root of the hard drive. It’s normal that you won’t find what is indicated there. Additional reminder: the "Option" key is the one located between the "Control" key and the "Command" key, which has a branching symbol, and for the benefit of Windows users, the "Alt" engraving in some cases.

But, as the automatic recovery files are deleted when you normally exit the document (whether you save it or not), they are only retained in the case of an application crash, which allows you to recover the document in the state it was in just before the crash. In your case, you shouldn’t find anything at all in the folder.

That said, be sure to provide details (version and update level of Office, version of Mac OS X, etc.) that could help in giving you more detailed explanations just in case...

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Hello to you!
Bernard