System Restore to Recover Document

[MerpsMom]

My husband was working on a spreadsheet in MSWorks. I asked if he was saving his work as he went. He clicked Save, then exited. All the data he'd entered in the last few hours disappeared and the document showed the entries from several hours earlier.

I have never encountered anything like this. I've searched all files, folders, and it's just not there. He did not hit anything but Save as I watched him carefully.

Question: I want to go back to February 12, 5:30 p.m. There are three restore points on the Restore calendar for the 12th: 5:48, 5:52, and 6:08. I'm assuming these are the times when I tried System Restore myself. I need to get back to 5:30, or even an hour earlier. Is it possible?

Using the Create Your Own Point obviously won't work as it's for the current time right now.

Please tell me there's a way to save this data: it's vital to me, and I'm totally baffled as to what happened to it.

Cathie

[Mike Labbe @ GTP]

Hi Cathie

Is it possible that this was a document someone emailed to him as an attachment, which he opened from the email (instead of saving the attachment first) ?

If so, the changes may have been saved to a temporary work folder.

What I suggest:
Click START -> SEARCH -> all files & folders
Put in part of the file name, with a (*.*) wildcard ending. example: 4q2006*.*
See if Windows can find the file.

System Restore applies to Windows system files, for the most part. It won't restore the MY DOCUMENTS folder, QUICKBOOKS, or POS SYSTEMS. It will restore the registry settings and some important operating system files. (reg, profiles, WMI, WFP, IIs, etc) This is good if you install a new driver that causes the system to misbehave. It can put you back to the settings prior to the problem.

Unfortunately, it won't be of any use in this situation. Regular backups are also very important, in addition to the system restore feature.

If he hit SAVE, it is out there somewhere. My money is on it being an email attachment, and if so it should be in one of the temporary folders.

Good luck
Mike

[MerpsMom]

I'm off to look, Mike, and I pray you're right.

[Paul N]

Cathie:

Or, it could be that he saved it as a new file?

Do a search on all Excel file extensions (was that an Excel spreadsheet?).

Do a thorough search for all files as follows (I am assuming the file extension is .xls, for Excel):

Go to Start, select Run, then type CMD

You'll get a black window (aka DOS window): Type the following command: dir *.xl* /s

This will search the whole hard disk (C drive) for any files with Excel extension. This may take a few minutes. It will list any Excel file in any folder on your hard disk

To exit the DOS window, close it or type Exit.

Do you have another hard disk beside the C drive, by the way??

And other, not so obvious thing: was he working with a file that's on a floppy disk??

[MerpsMom]

Thank you for all your help. Tried all your tricks, and it is just plain gone. This is the d*amndest thing I've ever encountered. He can recreate over some hours/days; but my biggest problem is I don't know why it happened. It's a Works file and I even looked in Excel.

If it's there, I'll eat my hat, my coat, my mittens.

Crud.

[Mike Labbe @ GTP]

I am not familiar with the works program, but many programs have a "Recently used documentss" list on the file menu. It may be worth opening the program to see if this is on the list, perhaps under a wrong name?

I would also check start -> my recent documents (if you have windows configured to have this feature)

Mike

[Paul N]

Actually it is: Start, Documents.

It will list all recently used documents. You might find it there as Mike said.