Accidentally deleted an important file? Lost something important when your computer crashed? No problem! Recuva recovers files deleted from your Windows computer, Recycle Bin, digital camera card, or MP3 player. And it's free!

It's worth a shot! Anything is at this point....

Here is a link that might be useful: recuva

1. I assume you have done a complete search of recent files.

2. I assume you also done a complete search of Excel backup files ( *.bak )

dcarch

Recuva works quite well. The only concern I'd have is that any drive activity *may* place Recuva or other files ... where your deleted .xls file is/was. Ideally remove the drive and install as a slave, running Recuva from the primary drive (depending on how important the file is of course).

I have found Vista and to a lesser extent 7's search features don't always find what's there. Installing Nirsoft's Search My Files on both o/s as an option may be worth a shot. Same applies though - installing that s/w may impact data retrieval.

Search My Files

Sorry but I really can't understand most of this. What does "Recuva" do and what will it do to my computer if I download it. Not paranoia, just want to know what it is. Also, I'm not sure I'm understanding what you're saying Exgm, I only have one computer, it's a Vaio laptop and it only has one operating system as far as I know. I don't have any external drives running right now.

Thanks for trying to help!

The thing is I've done multiple searches.
I've searched for any files modified today, the date when I lost it.
I've searched for any .xls files
I tried dcarch's search.
I tried a guided search through my Internet Temp. folder with the techie from work

What confuses me is all the times I kept clicking on the "Save" icon I never got a window screen telling me it was not saving or when I closed it I didn't get a warning to save or I would loose data. All those times I was doing a "Save" what was happening? Where was it "saving" it to and why isn't it there then. When I tried opening it again from the e-mail attachment and saving it, it says it is a read-only file and to save it I would have to rename it. Well why didn't that happen the first time? I just don't understand how I could save and save a file and then close it and have it completely disappear. I saved it after every data entry, and yet it wasn't really "saving" anything I guess.

Make up an Excel file, and send it to yourself as an attachment, open it and go thru the "save" proccess and see if that would give you a hint where and if your system can "save" to.

dcarch

Recuva is a free program that you can install to retrieve deleted files.

Dcarch's advice is good, I'd also see if you can use "Save As" and point it to another location under a different file name if plain "Save" doesn't produce the desired results.

have you checked in your actual gmail for it? in the drafts folder or any of your folders on gmail or the email itself.
I wonder if since you were opening it from gmail if it opened it in google docs??? are you absolutely sure you had it opened in MS office program?
I would focus on gmail.

I think it's over becaue I think I did something while looking for it that rewrote it. I what Exgm said and found out that the "Default" file is the "Public" folder under "Users" and I did find the file that says it is a "Copy" of the one I was looking for, but when I opened it it is the empty database so I think I must have tried opening it again and it reverted back to its original form or something. I dunno, I didn't open it righ away but might have done so under the tuteledge of the techie at work, since we couldn't find it.

Anyway, the file path was C:\Users\Public\Documents if anyone else has this problem. Not sure why that didn't show up in a search though. I searched for ANY file on the C drive that had been altered today before I did anything else.

I also tried to look in Google docs but I don't really get how to search that. I don't think I used that, I think I would have realized that. But I did try what Exgm said, and if I open a sample downloaded .xls file without saving it and then opening it, it DOES just go about saving it into this default file. Don't know WHY that folder does not show up on a search though. If it had showed up with the search I would have seen it since I searched for ANY xls file.

At this point I've spent almost as much time on this as I did creating the file so I have to give up. I think it is hopeless anyway Somehow I must have rewritten the file thanks to the "help" from our techie. Or else it was just long gone anyway, since it seems like a search would have turned it up. I'm very suspect of this whole search function now.

Souns like it download to and opened in the temporary internet files, your browser cache.

Yest that's what I thought, that it would be in my "Temp" file. That's what I had the techie from work help me find and search, but it was not in there. I also searched the browser cache. All kinds of ancient stuff in there, but not this file.

Beware of this happening to you. I thought it would immediately show up in "Recent Files" as soon as I opened up Excel again, but it did not. If when you download something from an e-mail attachment, you click on "Open" first, instead of saving it to the hard drive, and then start working on it, and you haven't used the "Save As" function and saved it somewhere on your hard drive, you will loose any work you do no matter how many times you click on "Save." If you haven't done a "Save As" first, it is all for naught. I kind of instinctively knew that, but I get very busy with a lot of stuff at work and all it takes is one lapse of clicking on "Open" and forgetting to save first before starting to work.