argh!

From: Brett Peters
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2003 11:24 AM
To: Help Me
Subject: Data recovery/lost documents

Greetings:

I have lost a lot of data I worked on yesterday, most specifically an excel document with the results of a partner investigation. I had AutoRecover turned on, and saved my work regularly yesterday. Today, I find that the document has reverted back to the state it was in on Wednesday. I cannot find it in either C:\Documents and Settings\Bpeters\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\ (the AutoRecover save location), nor in any of the other locations. Several other documents are exhibiting similar behavior - changes I made yesterday afternoon have disappeared, even though I know I’d saved and closed them before leaving for the evening.

I was also prompted for a full login this morning. Did something happen last night? Is there any other places I can check to recover my data?

Cheers,
Brett

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From: Brett Peters
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 10:30 AM
To: Help Me
Subject: FW: Data recovery/lost documents

Greetings:

This problem has recurred. The project that this problem is affecting is becoming critical because of it.

On Friday, after Mike installed the latest patches to Word, I was eventually able to actually recover the data from Thursday and continue working. I don’t know what it was that I did specifically that recovered the document, but after I rebooted twice and started Excel the AutoRecovery offered me a version of the document - last saved by user - that contained the missing data. I proceeded to save the document and work on it for the rest of Friday afternoon, adding in new data. I then saved it and closed all applications before leaving for the weekend.

This morning, this document has reverted to the state is was at on Wednesday, again. Restarting has not solved the problem.

Please help.

Cheers,
Brett

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From: Brett Peters
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 11:46 AM
To: Help Me
Subject: FW: Data recovery/lost documents

Greetings, once again:

First, my apologies for my tone in my previous email; I’m considerably upset at the software on my computer, which is irrational behavior in and of itself, and I hope I didn’t give offense with my curtness.

I found the missing document in a hidden folder within the temporary internet files folder, C:\Documents and Settings\Bpeters\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLKA4D. I did this by searching the existing visible *.tmp files with WordPad, scanning through the gibberish, determining that the above folder must exist even though I couldn’t see it, and then searching for OLKA4D. I have no idea why the folder remains hidden, even though I have selected “Show Hidden Files and Folders” in the folder display. Also, I have no answer as to why searching for either the filename or the text within the file did not return the correct file. I am very, very unhappy with this and, for my own peace of mind, would appreciate any insight you might offer as to these unexplained behaviors of Office and Windows.

There’s no chance that I could have Linux with OpenOffice installed on my machine, is there? No, I didn’t think so.

Please close this ticket.

Cheers,
Brett