Undoing data loss via mis-saving formats?

March 17, 2006 3:03 AM

Using Open Office 2.0, I accidentally saved and closed a document as a .txt. Unfortunately, this wiped out all formatting, and more importantly, footnotes. How can I undo this?

Unfortunately, because I closed OOo, the undo buttons aren't available, and apparently I had been saving the document as a txt for a while, so I don't have anything archived that I can get the information from. Everything I entered I did so as the default .odt/.doc format, with footnotes, et cetera functioning fine. When I opened it back up this morning, both the saved file and all archives were .txts. Is there any way I can revert this, or at least recover the footnotes?

posted by duende to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

If there is no .doc file I think you are screwed. You probably already know the following already, but just in case. Usually if you start a document and save it regularly it creates a .doc file and then if you later save it as a text file it creates a new .txt file. Are you absolutely sure there is no .doc file, even in perhaps another directory? Have you wildcard searched for it (i.e. C:myfile.*)?
posted by caddis at 3:34 AM on March 17, 2006

If you've been saving in txt format for a while, you should have seen a dialog box warning you that information would be lost, right? I say this not to be snarky, but if you didn't see this, then I guess you were saving in odt after all. Can it be that it's just the extension that is wrong?
posted by swordfishtrombones at 4:20 AM on March 17, 2006

Response by poster: There are no .odts or .docs of the document since the outline, about 8 versions and 9 days ago. Apparently I've been saving as .txt all this time, and never rebooted; OOo preserved the formatting, but as soon as it had to load the file, it reverted to .txt formatting. Since there are no archival copies of .odt/.docs, because they were always .txts, am I just screwed?
posted by duende at 4:35 AM on March 17, 2006

Did you check if there's anything in the /user/backup/ directory? Check in the settings (Extra->Options->Openoffice.org->Paths; to find out where it is). If you had autosave enabled, there might be a copy with a *.bak extension?
posted by swordfishtrombones at 5:18 AM on March 17, 2006

If you have google desktop running it might be cached. It happens with Word. Don't know if it backups Open Office.
posted by srboisvert at 7:39 AM on March 17, 2006