Word Help Needed Please

[amberfocus]

Does anyone know how to recover a temporary file from the newest version of Word?  Their help feature is no help.  What I did was download a file, beta'd it and saved it, but I didn't save it with a new name and when I closed it I lost it.  And now I can't find it anywhere despite a full search.  Is there a way to find it or is it lost?  It's only a few pages and it's not like it would take me long to rebeta it, but if I don't have to redo the work I don't want to.

Comments

[simplyn2deep.livejournal.com]

I'm confused...if you saved it (with or without a new name) how did you loose it?

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was my problem. Shouldn't have done, but it did.

[solarflar3.livejournal.com]

Go to recently opened documents. If you look in the start menu in Documents you should have a list of what you have recently opened. It *might* be there. No promises tho.

If you saved it, it might still be in your temp folder.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Nope, not there. Oh, well.

[chissel.livejournal.com]

Your best bet is to do a full search of your hard drive for any files updated today. Use *.* as the search parameter because the temp file may not be a .doc. Try opening anything that looks promising - you may have to tell your computer to use Word to open it.

But, sorry, I really don't have much hope for you. This works less than 10% of the time I try it.

Good luck!

[maniacalshen.livejournal.com]

Holy crap, I didn't know someone actually took that icon! Sweet.

But you forgot to credit me for it, dear. ;)

[chissel.livejournal.com]

No way! I'm so sorry! It's one of my very favorites!

[maniacalshen.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm glad someone liked it. :D

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's gone. We've tried everyone's suggestions and it's gone. I redid the work. But thanks.

[draconin.livejournal.com]

Word often saves temp working files using the extension .tmp in a Windows temp directory. You could try doing a search for *.tmp files that were created during the time period you were working. ie the last 24 hours. Don't forget to tell it to look in system folders etc. The problem is that those files are generally NOT in a normal Word format but simply snippets - the contents of the clipboard, the current paragraph etc. Also they generally get tidied up by Word (deleted) automatically and so you may well find that a) it's gone, and/or b) it's not very useful if you do open it. I think it's not likely you'll get what you did back in a usable form even if you do find something.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Tried that and it didn't even show any .tmp files being created that day which is so not true. *sighs* It's gone.

[debs7.livejournal.com]

If you opened the file from an email it might have saved under the email program file.

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

I had hope for that, but it didn't. I sure wish it had.

[heather916.livejournal.com]

In addition to everybody else's good comments, I'll add a couple more. Depending on the email system you use, it might have saved the changes directly to the attachment. If you go back to the email and open the attachment again, you might find your changes were saved.

Depending on what version of Word you're using, you also might be able to just open Word again. Sometimes it will pop up with a reminder that there was a temporary file not saved properly, which will let you just open the document and save it with a new name. Or you might be able to go to the File menu and look to see if the chapter is in the listing of recently opened Word files.

I hope one of these many suggestions from me and everybody else works - it's such a crap shoot when these things happen. Good luck!

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

It didn't. Nothing has worked. I had to face that it was just gone and redo the beta. Oh, well. It wasn't like it took me that long. Thanks.

Word helps

[othermewriter.livejournal.com]

Okay don't see this mentioned (forgive me if missed it) but if you open MS Word you can go to the file menu and it will often have a list of the last few documents you worked on.

Personally as soon as I load word I go to the Tools Options menu and choose the option show last 9 files (the default is 4) and change the save frequency to 3 minute instead of every 10 min as well as flipping on the create backup file (can't tell you how many times that last has saved my bacon). This is also the same section where it tells you where it stores your auto-recover files.

In word 2007 that section may be named "preferences" but but can't swear to that as I have only dealt with that ver a couple of times. Good luck.

Re: Word helps

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Well, it automatically saves every five minutes, but it didn't save this at all. Thanks for trying.

[quill2006.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if you're using Windows XP or Vista or a Mac, but depending on which you use and the settings on your internet browser, your file may be downloaded into a special folder called something like Temp. I know that when I download Word files (and only Word files) they end up there until I save them to my desktop. If you didn't look at the location when you were saving the file (very easy if you just hit save rather than save as) the file gets updated but sits in your Temp folder.

I use Windows XP; I'm pretty sure that Macs don't have something like this, but I have no idea if Windows Vista uses a Temp folder or not.

I found my Temp folder by going to My Computer>Local Disk C: (My hard drive)>WINDOWS>Temp. There's also a folder inside that called Temporary Internet Files; I don't know if it would be in there but you could check.

I hope this helps!

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

It's Vista. There was nothing in my temp files at all, which I really don't get. We tried that last thing when you suggested it but it lists nothing there, nothing for the whole week as a matter of fact. I think it glitched. Oh, well, I've redone the work now. Thanks for trying to help.