I was creating a document in Microsoft Word 97, and left my computer for about 5 minutes. When I returned, a window had popped up. I didn’t really read it before clicking it away, thinking it was some kind of default saving announcement.
So when I went to save my document to floppy, it didn’t do anything. So I clicked on “Close”, knowing that it would prompt me to give it a name and a drive to save it in.
But it didn’t. It just disappeared from the screen, and now I don’t know where it went.
Anybody know how to search for and find a document when this type of thing happens? I’d really hate to have to start all over.
On the bottom of the drop-down that appears, just above the Exit option, you should have a short list of the last several files you’ve edited. It should be the first one. It will be called Document1 (unless you save a lot of documents without naming them).
It is very likely in c:\Document1 or c:\My Documents\Document1
Unfortunately, that didn’t work. The documents listed there are previously saved documents (included one I saved to floppy before I started the one I lost). This leads me to believe that I or my computer deleted it.
Is there another way to find unnamed documents? I couldn’t see anything in the c: file that was a likely suspect.
If you were reading from or writing to a non-standard save directory you can also use the “Find > File or Folders” feature in windows located on the start bar to locate the file. Type in *.doc (or whatever you were using as a file ending and have it search the entire “my computer” group or whatever drives you wish. If the file is still resident on your system the search will pick it up.
On the off chance that the file save procedure got munged up and there is no standard .doc file present you can have the system search for a text string within all files using . when it asks for file name. Occasionally the file, or the majority of it, will be saved as a temp file somewhere on the system.
astro, I tried both suggestions. The first was no go. But on the second, I did find a Scandisk.log item that is dated 09/03/2001, and has about the same time of day as when this disaster befell me. Do I have to read the entire document to find it, or recall it? I’m afraid I don’t have much of an idea what to do even if it is there.
Unless the file was saved (at some point) and has been auto deleted and it’s sitting in your protected system trash basket you are most likely SOL. Assuming Word acts similarly to WP 9.0 when typing a word processing file there are typically hidden background incremental backups of the active document to allow recovery of the current file in case the system goes down. This hidden file is typically deleted and re-started the next time the program starts unless it receives some sort of cue that the program was not shutdown properly in which case it offers up the hidden file to be recovered as a document file.
If (which is what it sounds like) this shadow document has been deleted (in that the program closed and re-opened normally) and the file was never saved unless you can find a scrap of the file in the trash recovery bin it is probably gone.
If you can find a file scrap there is an applet built into Word to allow recovery of as much text as possible
Inside Microsoft Word
“Recovering text from a damaged document”
by Tracy L. Aardsma
I’ve lost files I’ve typed at work on NT. I found them by going to the Q drive at work (which is a partition of the hard drive) and looking for “Restore.” I don’t know if that’s going to help you, but there’s no harm trying. When NT closes a document I was typing without saving it, it saves it in the “Restore.” As you know, Word saves documents that you type automatically at certain set intevals, depending upon what you set the intervals at (5 mins, 10 mins, etc.) Apparently, they can be found in the Restore folder.
With Explorer I have to select ‘view all files’ including hidden files. It’s probably a hidden file in your regular document directory. I see the doc that Im working on usually as 1. file I save it with 2. a hidden *.tmp file that Word makes.