Repairing lost my text.

[ksskss]

When I opened my OO today, it wanted to do the repair thing and i allowed it and after it had finished I discovered that all the stuff I wrote yesterday was gone. Everything was fine when I saved it yesterday and turned my computer off. What happened? Can I get it back somehow?

I'm on windows xp with OO 2.4.

Thanks.

[squenson]

ksskss,

In which format did you save your file (Word's .doc or OOo's .odt)?

[ksskss]

odt

[squenson]

In the folder "C:\Documents and Settings\<<your Username>>\Application Data\OpenOffice.org2\user\backup", do you see a .bak that corresponds to your document? Copy it and change extension to .odt and try opening it. Most probably it will be the last saved version, i.e. the old one, but who knows.

[ksskss]

oh, wow... so I´m gonna start writing it again now. But thank you so much!

[Hagar Delest]

Have you overwritten the original file with the recovered one? Had you checked what looked the original file like?

I've seen situations where the recovered file had less information than the manually saved version of the file. Don't know why the autosave temporary file hadn't been cleared after the last manual save operation.

Thanks to add '[Solved]' at beginning of your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed.

NB: moved your thread in the Setup and Troubleshouting forum.

[acknak]

One suggestion (that I follow myself):

If at startup, OOo offers to recover a file, and I know that I saved the file (i.e. OOo did not crash while I was working), then I cancel the recovery because I know there's no need for it. Recovery is only needed when OOo, or the system, crashes. In normal use, no recovery is necessary, so I cancel the offer.

If you cancel the recovery, you should get a second offer: to save the recovery file. This you can always accept safely. Just make sure you don't overwrite your actual file--check that the recovered file gets a different name. After it's saved, you can check your saved document to see if it's damaged. If not, forget the temporary recovered file and go on. If your real document is damaged, then you can try the recovered file and see if there's anything in it.

If OOo crashes and you know that some of your work was not saved, then you have nothing to lo lose by allowing OOo to try and recover your file.

[Hagar Delest]

I've seen situations where the recovered file had less information than the manually saved version of the file.

I'm not alone: How do I find OpenOffice temp files with the search tool?

[Nosforit]

I did allow OOo to recover my novel even though I could not remember any reason for it to be doing that, but what it did was erase my previous day's work. There is no backup file, and the recovery seems to have overwritten my saved file with its own faulty version.

If my work is lost, should not this recovery system be flagged as broken?

[foxcole]

I did allow OOo to recover my novel even though I could not remember any reason for it to be doing that, but what it did was erase my previous day's work. There is no backup file, and the recovery seems to have overwritten my saved file with its own faulty version.

If my work is lost, should not this recovery system be flagged as broken?

What makes you think it's not? Go to the IssueTracker and search for "recovery" (no quotes). You'll find a list of issues related to recovery. You can register there, log in, and vote for issues that are important to you, up to five votes per module (such as Writer or Calc) and up to two votes per issue.

In this user-to-user forum, all we can do is suggest work practices that will help you mitigate the chances of future data loss. Similar questions and issues have been raised many, many times in this forum, and I'd suggest that you might want to try searching for recovery and .bak. Several threads explain what happens when you have the "automatically create backups" option turned on and when you do manual saves frequently.

Short answer is, do both of those things, especially the saving often, and you'll lose very little work in the future because the .bak file will be as up-to-date as the document version prior to the last manual save.

For now, you could try an actual data recovery tool such as ADRC Data Recovery to see if the data for your updated document still exists on your machine.

But, please understand... anyone who's been around the block with computers will know that you alone are the sole reliable means of protecting your data. Save often and back up your work. You must not rely solely on software to do it for you, if the work is valuable to you. Software breaks. Electrons go flying. Hardware fizzles. There are too many ways for computers to fail, in far too many permutations, for any system to be in perfectly reliable control of your data at any given time. Smokey Bear says, "Only you can prevent forest fires."

[Nosforit]

I think I'm going stop using the software entirely... Wordpad will do fine for my needs, and has never failed me before. =\

[foxcole]

I think I'm going stop using the software entirely... Wordpad will do fine for my needs, and has never failed me before. =\

No one in this forum is going to ream you out for choosing a different software, but then again, it's no concern of ours. I frankly don't care what software you choose, but I do care that your needs are met. This is, again, a user-to-user forum, and all we do here is help other people use OOo.

No matter what software you decide on, if you don't develop the habit of saving your own work and backing it up, you will lose work again. Trust me. Been there more than once, myself, until that lesson finally drilled itself into my thick head.

[Hagar Delest]

Save often and back up your work.

The problem here is that users do save and quit OOo correctly it seems. But OOo finds an old autosave file version and launch the recovery process. That's the real problem. Then, the only mistake is to overwrite the last saved file. Users should either check what that saved file looks like or at least save under another name.

Problem is that [at the beginning] we tend to rely on the software.

I'm with you Nosforit, I know you've been cheated on that by OOo. But once you know that, think about it twice, the recovery process is quite good when it comes to a real recovery issue (I don't think that Wordpad can do that) and OOo is quite powerful, especially because of its styles concept.

[foxcole]

Save often and back up your work.

The problem here is that users do save and quit OOo correctly it seems.

But that's only half the recommendation. Save often and back up your work. Don't rely on the software to do it, save your own copies. I understand OOo's file save and recovery might not work. That's why I'm suggesting more proactive habits.

But as I noted before, it's equally important to have the option Tools> Options> Load/Save> General> "Always create backup copy" turned on. Otherwise there is no .bak file. We've found that the .bak file is updated with every manual save, saving the "old" version of the document... the version that would be current if you close the file and choose to discard changes. The more often you save the more up-to-date this file is, and you are taking positive action to protect your work. If OOo is using this version as the recovered file, then it's even more important to save as often as possible, isn't it?

One positive action. The other is to create your own backups of current versions as you go.

I like to use a file manager for this... save the file, then copy it to a different location using the file manager instead of Save As from inside the application, so I don't have to change directories every time I save a backup copy.

[Hagar Delest]

I know, I know but I belong to the category of users who rely on the software once the file is saved. Neglecting the external risks. Bad habit I know
But I assume the fact that I'll be the only responsible in case of problem.