Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

OMG, how did you recover it??????

The zip archive was rather badly damaged, but "zip -FF" was able to pull out a few files, including content.xml and styles.xml, which are the critical pieces. I took a new, empty spreadsheet and used zip to replace those files with the ones from your document.

There was apparently some sort of embedded chart which was only partly recovered; I just ignored it.

There may be some settings stored in the document (calculation or language settings, for example) that may have been lost as well.

Thanks for responding! I didn't know about -FF option to zip.

vincelight wrote:Same general problem: OO spreadsheet that I update every week. This week upon opening, it
complained about ASCII FIlter Options. Using the default, it opens in a text document (?)
and it's all #'s
I've tried some of the previous suggestions...zip file didn't work. there's no backup file. can't
even make any sense of the document if opened in a regular text editor. tried checking the file
system for any corruption, but none present.
I keep the file on an SD card which I thought would prevent me from ever losing
the file...sigh.

Is it gone? Anyone have any ideas?

http://www.mediafire.com/download/x75pb ... s_copy.ods

Thanks in advance!

This post is little bit old but to find something.
When I opened the file with binary editor, there were strange 37 bytes and additional zero filling until 7FFF position. After that ZIP file header seems started with the data.
After removing the strange heading and zero data, I tried to open the file with the office. I got recovery dialog and some resulting data. But I do not know the data was kept or not.

I've created a short survey related to these types of issues, where the contents of a file is replaced by hash marks. The survey asks the user for information related to the circumstances of the issue, the machine configuration, OpenOffice settings, etc. The hope is that we can collect this information is a systematic way and narrow down the problem that way.

So if you run into this problem again, please enter the details here:

http://survey.openoffice.org/index.php/334187/lang-en

Also, if anyone has a good recollection of previous incidents, you can enter the details for those as well. Obviously, the more you remember, the better.

Thanks!

-Rob

Vista SOLVED with:
malorimer wrote: In Windows 7 What I found to work was:
Goto the File location - Right Click On The File > Restore Previous Session .... Windows searched for a bit and Then found files from the last time I saved it. Praise the Lord!
Should work for Vista Business and Vista Ultimate, too. For Vista Home, use Shadow Explorer shadow explorer.exe:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows- ... ows-vista/;

I think oo odt auto back up/save froze in the middle of an AVGfree upgrade install. 1st backup issue I've ever had.
I filled out the survey, thank you forum TK

Please note that the Restore Previous, to the best of my knowledge, removed from Windows as of Windows 8.0, but your input, TK3, should be helpful for people running Windows Vista to Windows 7

Hi all, I had the same issue and cried for several hours... but then we checked app data, found it in roaming>open office>backup it was there in all its glory.

I hope the same for all of you. good luck.

TK3 wrote:I think oo odt auto back up/save froze in the middle of an AVGfree upgrade install.

Normally, OOo shouldn't be running when installing other software. Most program installers display a recommendation to close running programs before proceeding with the installation.

Bill wrote:Normally, OOo shouldn't be running when installing other software. Most program installers display a recommendation to close running programs before proceeding with the installation.

I remember such warnings from the good old days, they're long ago now. Even MS Update allows you to run software while it's installing what it calls essential software. AVG doesn't post such a warning, neither does the Java install software (which, btw, recently wants to install a new version even though I have the latest), or the OpenOffice install programs from either Apache or TDF. So I suppose it's obsolete.

johnnieskywalker wrote:I had the same problem and couldn't locate any temporary files, and followed everything i found on google, including the rename to zip, temp files.... blah blah. The only thing that worked for me was using "recuva" a freeware undelete utlility by piriform and enabled "deep scan" . It found the same .odt file from the day before (in the same location as the newly fudged one) and successfully recovered it. no more pound signs.....

I realize this is a very old thread but this issue is still occurring in 2017 so posting in case anyone else stumbles upon it looking for a solution. I tried the recuva and did the deep scan and sure enough the prior day version was there. Thank you so much Johnnieskywalker. Yesterdays version is better than no version. Learned my lesson and have the back up checked and will email to myself each time.

For those searching ...

... see [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files for detailed instructions on how to identify and un-delete the temporary files Writer wrote while editing the file, and then deleted.

It discusses the different requirements for .odt and .docx files, and .doc files; and how to find and un-delete the various AutoRecovery files.