WordPerfect

August 9, 2004 5:43 PM

Help! Somebody in the office was working on a Word Perfect document and accidentally saved over the contents with a blank document. Google only provides info on corrupted or deleted files (without much info on Word Perect). It seems like this would be recoverable metadata, but I know nothing about Word Perfect.

If it matters, the document was saved on a server.

posted by ajr to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I am sorry to be the one to tell you this.. but you will most likely be unable to recover anything. If it is critically important, you should stop using the computer immediately, remove the hard drive and send it to a disaster/data recovery specialist... try google.
Unfortunately, you are probably boned.

"Fated to drift forever through the void! Oh cruel fate, to be thusly boned! Ask not for whom the bone bones - it bones for thee."
- Bender
posted by ac at 6:12 PM on August 9, 2004

Check with your company's IT dept. and see if backups we're run on the server. If they are, you should be able to have it restored from backup.
posted by entropy at 7:03 PM on August 9, 2004

Check in the temp folder. Better, select the whole c drive in explorer and run a search on the filename. Sometimes you can find an in-between version that was saved automatically a few minutes before the mishap.

But, most likely, you're fucked.
posted by bingo at 8:19 PM on August 9, 2004

I don't know, there well might be a temp file. For a pretty thorough search, you could go to the C drive and search all files on the hard drive for a particular key word...not just a file name but contents. It has worked wonders for me.

Really, is there any excuse not for word processors to save ex-versions?
posted by inksyndicate at 11:02 PM on August 9, 2004

I did this in college and I must concur; You. Are. Fucked.
posted by Dagobert at 11:53 PM on August 9, 2004

Data recovery software like FinalData (which I know from experience is KaZaAable) usually picks up previous versions of saved documents.

The reason being that when your computer saves a file, even resaving, it just saves it wherever there's free space, rather than over the top of the previous file. So it's certainly worth a try.
posted by armoured-ant at 6:45 AM on August 10, 2004

Really, is there any excuse not for word processors to save ex-versions?

Or the OS itself. Geez VMS had this what, 30 years ago?

One of the reasons I like TextPad. It has this feature in several flavours.
posted by Mitheral at 10:22 AM on August 10, 2004

or since it is on a server -- it should be on any of the previous back-ups -- if you back-up your server.
posted by Julnyes at 11:26 AM on August 10, 2004