Posted on 01/31/2006 1:27:35 PM PST by proud American in Canada
Hi,
I was hoping someone knows a way to recover a document in Microsoft Word.
When the pc shut down improperly, Word saved a copy of the document as it was at the time I shut down, and it asked me if I wanted to view it again. I clicked on the wrong button and the document was replaced--meaning I'd lost hours of work (and I know, I had saved, but I can't seem to find this document anywhere. I have no idea what I did, if I saved it under some other file, or what).
I don't know if the document goes to the recycle bin, but when I click on the recycle bin I get a strange error message.
Does anyone know another way, from with Word, maybe, to recover a deleted document?
The older (Office 2000) version of Word that I use stores backup copies of documents in the subdirectory where you stored the document.
The error message says something like the application referenced a memory at such and such a place, and "the memory could not be written."
Thank you! Now, how do I find this backup copy--I'm not seeing them when I am in Word and go to "open."
Let me pull up Word and do some exploring.
Use windows explorer to see if there is a document saved that has a similar name to what you were working on and it'll have one of those squigly ( ~ ) things in it. That might be it.
~$
When you open a doc in Word, a temp file is created. This temp file may have some portion of the original filename in it. It will also have the tilde mark in the filename (~).
You might also just search for the tilde mark. The temp file may show up.
Good luck.
?ame.doc for Name.doc
I've often found it in the backup folder as well. However when that fails I've had good luck with DOC Regenerator. I downloaded it here:
http://www.pcnet-online.com/downloads/docregen.htm
Thank you! I did that and got the same kind of error message as on the recycle bin. I apparently can't use Explorer.
There must be something wrong here.
Use Win Explorer and go to the root drive (probably C:\) and search for *name you called it* and see if anything is returned. If you had not yet saved and named, then look open word and look under "tools", "options", "file locations", and see where it puts the "auto recover files". look there and who knows what it names and unsaved file but you should recognize the date and time of crash
When you do this,you'll get a list of all the MS Word files on your HD...then click the 'date' column and the file should be either near the top or the bottom of the list.
Thank you--will this be done in Explorer? I get an error message when I try to open that.
I'll try the "temp files" folders.
You might also want to make sure Windows is set to show hidden files, or you may not see it.
You could do a system-wide search for your document with Google's Desktop Search program, from http://desktop.google.com/ . It will index your files and you'll be able to search for your document using key phrases from the text. That way it wouldn't matter what filename it is called, the Desktop Search program could find it based on its content.
Thank 0you all very much for your suggestions--I just realized I'm missing a key ingredient for dinner so I have to run out, but I'll try your ideas when I get back in a few minutes. :)
I use Ztree.
Download at www.ztree.com. Shareware good for 30 days. Small footprint and doesn't mess with Windows.
Log every file on your hard disk by pressing the asterisk key (*) on the root of the deive.
Hit (G)lobal view. You now see every single file on your hard drive.
Press ALT-(S)ort, by (D)ate.
You can now go to the exact date/time that you were editing the file and see all files stamped at that date/time. It will be obvious which files are the ones that may be fruitful.
You can also (T)ag and (S)earch for a particular string within those files. Search for something that you know was typed in the document. You may want to try both Text and Unicode search.
I'd like to find a utility which could produce a listing of everything on a hard drive, complete with a CRC-32 of every file (including ZIP contents). This would make it possible to determine which files, directories, and drives hold copies or (in the case of directories and drives) "almost-copies" of other files, directories, and drives. This would make it much easier to keep good backups of things (one difficulty with backups is determining when an old backup really contains nothing of value; if a file gets corrupted, it may be necessary to go to an old backup to get a good version, but if one could tell after doing a new backup that the file hadn't changed since the old one, that danger could be greatly reduced.
Now that's a cheery thought. ;)
Thanks again, all. I am printing out this thread and am now about to try some of these things, though I suppose at some point it's more efficient to just re-do the work I did in the original document.
Thanks again. :)
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