Where did my .doc go?

December 11, 2006 7:36 PM

When you open a .doc out of a yahoo email (just open - not downloaded) then edit it, and click the save icon, where does it go? What happens after you close that window?

My brother got an email attachment, opened it in yahoomail without downloading it, edited it for 2 hours, clicked the save icon continually, and then closed the document. Now he can't find it.
After having searched the computer to the best of his non-techie ability he believes it is gone.

Question: What happened to it and is it possible to get it back?
Thanks!

posted by amethysts to computers & internet (11 comments total)

It most likely was saved in a temp folder. I would search by going to start and searching by type and date modified. Enter *.doc in the file name field and the date it was modified. The system should find it for you. Then, open it and do a "save as" and choose the folder to save it in.
posted by alexmikayla at 7:44 PM on December 11, 2006

I did that with a Gmail file the other day. I circumvented it by going to the "My Recent Documents" tab in the start menu, clicking on the desired file and letting Windows do the searching for me. If he hasn't been on the computer much since said editing, you still may be able to go this route.
posted by Phire at 7:48 PM on December 11, 2006

It goes into the Temporary Internet Files folder. If you have XP or 2000, it'll be in the "C:\Documents and Settings\{your username}\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\{one of the randomly named subfolders}" with your username substituted in . The Local Settings folder is invisible, so you'll have to show invisible files to see it (in Folder Options... menu item), and you'll have to spelunk a bit through the subfolders, but it will probably be there. IE keeps around tons of files, so, unless you ran the Disk Cleanup wizard, it probably wasn't deleted.

On preview: If you do a search, you'll have to go into advanced options and choose "Search hidden files and folders" (or something like that). By default, it won't look in the temp folder
posted by boaz at 7:52 PM on December 11, 2006

It's not coming up any searches. Nor is it in the IE Temp files. Well, I tried.
posted by amethysts at 7:53 PM on December 11, 2006

It likely was in your temp files directory, although 1)IE tends to assign random names to temp files, so you might try searching for all .doc files that aren't in places you'd expect them to be; 2) IE sometimes cleans this out and deletes files if it thinks you're done with them.

You can get around this next time by using Save As, either from within IE or when saving in Word. Then just make sure to put it somewhere you want it to be.
posted by tiamat at 8:27 PM on December 11, 2006

thanks for your suggestions y'all. i guess IE deleted it from the temp folder when he closed the browser.

lesson=learned.
posted by amethysts at 8:56 PM on December 11, 2006

One more thing to try: From within Word, go to the File menu. There should be a list of recently edited documents. The first one will be the most recently edited. If he hasn't opened to many files since then, it will still be in this list. Open it up and do a "save as" to wherever you want.
posted by SampleSize at 9:34 PM on December 11, 2006

Hmph. Well, scratch that last comment. I just tested it out and it didn't work. Sorry.
posted by SampleSize at 9:38 PM on December 11, 2006

When faced with this problem, I usually do a search for all files in the Temporary Internet Files Folder modified in the last day / week. Then sort the results by date and manually look for the one that's missing. It may have a different name or even different extension.

Was he definitely using IE, not Firefox? The temp files are in a different location with the latter.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 4:53 AM on December 12, 2006

On Linux, it goes into /tmp .
posted by cmiller at 5:38 AM on December 12, 2006

If you opened it in IE, it's in the temp folder. It isn't deleted unless someone has set that option somewhere, in which case it will most likely be in the "Recycle Bin", from which you can undelete it.

Searching for *.doc in C:\ with the "check subfolders" option checked will find it, and if it doesn't look in your deleted items. You really have to deliberately make a series of specific changes to the default install for it to be set up so that this doesn't work, so you'd know if you have done that.

In the future, always do a "save as" so you know where it's going.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 9:16 AM on December 12, 2006