Can I undo a "save" in Excel?

May 10, 2004 10:12 AM

Hit "save" instead of "save as" in Excel... big mistake. The Undo control is 'greyed out' and googling doesn't give an answer, or I'm using the wrong words. Does anyone know if I can recover what I changed?
posted by chaz to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

As I understand it...no. You saved over the old file. I'm not sure how Excel works in terms of hard drive space, but I guess it's possible that you didn't save the new file in the exact same location as the old file...i.e., maybe it's like when you delete a file, the file is not actually gone, it's just that the space it occupies is fair game to be written over. But you would have to have someone who really, really knows what they're doing look at your hard drive. Also, I would do a general search on *.tmp files, on the off chance that maybe some byproduct of an earlier save remains.

But most likely, you're screwed.
posted by bingo at 11:18 AM on May 10, 2004

Incidentally, if you try to pursue the sketchy but distantly possible solution involving getting an expert to look at your hard drive, you should also stop using that computer as soon as possible, because every time you write to the hard drive, you risk writing over...what you have probably already written over.
posted by bingo at 12:12 PM on May 10, 2004

It appears that Excel writes over the original file, but maybe there's a chance to recover it. How about trying this?
posted by jasper411 at 12:15 PM on May 10, 2004

I lost about 12 pages of a story in Microsoft Word some years ago by making this exact same mistake. It occurred to me later on that given the auto-save feature in Word, I should have just yanked the power cord on the computer immediately after realizing my error -- when Word loaded up again, it would have presented me with the autosaved file (as well as the erroneously saved one). But you only have about 10 minutes to pull that one off.

Some years back as well (Windows 98?) Norton Utilities had some sort of super Recycle Bin that could recover saved-over files as well as emptied-from-the-Recycle-bin files. It worked some of the time.

I think you might be screwed.

That said, what's the deal with no-more-undo-after-saving? As a compulsive saver and compulsive re-reviser, this irks me to no end in every program that does it.
posted by rafter at 1:13 PM on May 10, 2004

Won't help you now, but will help you in the future: GoBack.

I'd never use a pc without it.™
posted by Blue Stone at 1:37 PM on May 10, 2004

My understanding is Excel clears out its "undo" memory on a save, starting over from zero, which is why the Undo command has grayed out.
posted by jazon at 2:34 PM on May 10, 2004