MS Word Disaster!

November 1, 2005 7:10 AM

MS Word Disaster A friend of mine was up all night working on a paper in MS Word. She hadn't saved the document. Some how she managed to click "cancel" rather than "save" when she closed the document. If the auto recovery was running is it possible to find one of those files and where would they be? This was the third night she'd been working.
posted by Grod to Computers & Internet (20 answers total)

When a new file is started a temporary file is created. This can be either in the windows temp directory, in "C:\ Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Microsoft". If the file is stored on a network drive then it will be temporarily created there.

This temporary file will have a few different letters after the tilde (or squiggly line “ ~”) . These are good ones to look for to find some lost info:

If you are looking for files used by word, then the following file types should be searched for, where "xxxx" is a number.

A word document file will look like ~wrdxxxx.tmp
A temp document file will look like ~wrfxxxx.tmp
An auto recovery file will look like ~wraxxxx.tmp
An auto recovery file that is complete will have the extension of .wbk.
posted by essexjan at 7:19 AM on November 1, 2005

She hadn't saved in THREE DAYS? Christ.

My advice at this stage is: do not open MSWORD until you know precisely what you are doing. There may be a cache file that contains her work, but will be overwritten when you reopen the program.

That said, I have no idea where to find that file.
posted by metaculpa at 7:20 AM on November 1, 2005

But essexjan does.
posted by metaculpa at 7:20 AM on November 1, 2005

Also toggling Word to "auto-save" like every five minutes would be a good suggestion for the future. I hope she gets it back.
posted by willmize at 7:32 AM on November 1, 2005

Go in C:/temp/, the file is probably out there but with a different name. Sort by date, or try a search on any specific term the paper contains.
posted by nims at 7:58 AM on November 1, 2005

I always have windows set to display hidden files, and I've noticed word creates several temp files in the same directory that the file you're working is saved in.

however

Word always deletes these files when you close the document.

My suggestion is to use the windows search function and look for all the files modified or created within the timeframe of her editing the document.
posted by delmoi at 8:01 AM on November 1, 2005

Also, she must have hit 'no' rather then 'cancle', since cancle just tells word to stay open.
posted by delmoi at 8:02 AM on November 1, 2005

I've always had good luck using a search program to look for a certain phrase, it can turn up in unexpected tmp files.
posted by johngoren at 8:59 AM on November 1, 2005

I hope youir friend will hit "save" every five minutes from now on.
posted by cahlers at 9:31 AM on November 1, 2005

Or even "save as" if you want to save different versions.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:09 AM on November 1, 2005

Response by poster: good suggestions, unfortunately it seems she also had a program called WindowsWasher that runs frequently.
posted by Grod at 10:11 AM on November 1, 2005

This is one of those useful lessons in life that teach you to routinely, and subconciously, hit Cmd+S (or Alt+F-S) in every app every 30 seconds. Seriously :) I hope she figures it out.
posted by wackybrit at 10:20 AM on November 1, 2005

I'd like to take this opportunity and remind everyone that Jesus saves; so should you.
posted by pwb503 at 10:26 AM on November 1, 2005

If we are talking this Window Washer she might be hosed. It claims to "permanently wash away" files. But this doesn't really mean much it might just delete IE temp files or might do something more severe (like delete and overwrite all temp files).

In either case it might be useful to look into a deleted file recovery program. If you can figure out some likely temp names (hint) or file contents (I think some rec programs let you search in a file), you might be able to use the knowledge plus the recovery program to rescue her work.

Good Luck.
posted by oddman at 10:31 AM on November 1, 2005

She's probably screwed. As mentionned above, the temp files are deleted when Word is closed normally. They're only saved if Word crashes or otherwise is abnormally terminated. She could install an undelete program and try to recover the deleted temp files, but it's a longshot. If she does try this, make sure she runs the program from CD because writing anything to the disk at this point could overwite the deleted file.
posted by exhilaration at 11:11 AM on November 1, 2005

When I overaw word processing operations at Hansard, the first thing I told new staff was to save their work often, because we could not always recover their work.

I suspect that your friend is boned because she closed out Word; if it had crashed, there should be a temp file kicking around.

Delmoi's suggestion is what I would do: search for all .doc files modified in the last few days but to not hold out any hope of finding it.
posted by solid-one-love at 11:38 AM on November 1, 2005

I like the sound of johngoren's suggestion. Related, try searching for all files modified (which implies created as well) in the last day, or two days. I would check off advanced options and ask it to search hidden and system files too, it might only add a bunch of uninteresting file but best to be thorough. This will be much more effective than trying to figure out where word put a file, assuming the file exists.

You should be able to do similar searches of all deleted files if you find a good undelete utility, but as others have said, make sure you don't install the utility on the drive you are searching! In fact, if you are going to try an undelete program, you shouldn't even turn the computer on and off until you are ready to do the search. So, I guess the easiest way for most people to do that would be: Install undelete on someone else's computer; Put problem drive in that computer as an extra hard drive; See what undelete can find.

A little reassurance:

Save dialogues that come up after closing a program should offer 'yes' 'no' and 'cancel'. 'yes' should save, 'no' should close without saving and 'cancel' should bring you back to the program as if you never asked to close it at all. The little 'x' in the upper right corner should be the same as 'cancel'. I just tested this on word 2003 and it behaves as expected (not surprising).

So, if word did close after hitting cancel it was improper and you have a chance that the temp files where left behind. Don't give up too easily.
posted by Chuckles at 11:59 AM on November 1, 2005

She could also download Google Desktop Search, and look for a key word or phrase from her document. If it's anywhere on her hard drive, that ol' Google Desktop will find it. It's a great tool.
posted by Faze at 12:29 PM on November 1, 2005

Save dialogues that come up after closing a program should offer 'yes' 'no' and 'cancel'

Actually they should offer 'Save', 'Don't Save', and 'Cancel', but I'm letting my Mac bias show.
though I notice that the Gnome Linux guidelines, and Open Office obey this rule too. Funny how the little things can make such a usability difference.
posted by Popular Ethics at 1:24 PM on November 1, 2005

What I used to tell people to do (in help desk jobs) was to do a find for all files created or modified in the hour or 2 before the crash -- open every single file... some of the paper might be in there.

Not saving for days? She may deserve losing it!

PS, you can tell her, since she already wrote it once, it'll be faster to write the 2nd time.
posted by k8t at 4:59 PM on November 1, 2005