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Lost Word document

18 years ago

I'm doing an ongoing transcription project. Recently I "saved" my work and exited Word. I do not know what I really did because when I reopened the document the entire thing was gone! The folder was empty except for the title page. I've lost a bit of work from time to time because of not saving properly, but the original document was intact and I only had to redo a portion. I searched my whole hard drive but could not find the document. Does anyone have any idea what I might have done to cause it to disappear? Is there any possibility of recovering my document short of consulting a professional service?

Thanks

Lou

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Comments (5)

mikie_gw
18 years ago
Have you tried windows text search, with advanced checked. And searched for text using a unique couple of words, or string of words, or one single unique word that would be contained in the saved document ?
louh_gw
Original Author
18 years ago
Thanks Mickie, but I tried that without success.

Lou
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DA_Mccoy
18 years ago
How about a Start>Search/Find for .doc and see if the file is listed there?

DA
minnie_tx
18 years ago
I've found things by doing what DA said. you can check by approximate date too.
bee4mee
18 years ago
Lou,

You may be able to recover your file (or an older version) by using an undelete programme.

Ideally you should save any recovered file onto another drive. (This prevents the recovered file from overwriting and corrupting the original one if it tries to use the same place on the drive.)

As a last resort if you haven't got another drive (or USB thumb drive or CD writer) and, providing that you drive isn't too full, then you could just try to recover it to a temporary folder. There is usually a fair chance that you can recover the file.

You are more likely to be able to recover a file if the computer isn't used too often between losing the file and trying to recover it.

Try using the simple FreeUndelete programme from: www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/download.htm

Here is a link that might be useful: FreeUndelete

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