Document full of pound signs

[RebornLioness]

I know there are many posts about this issue but I thought I'd give it one last stab. I have tried every option in this tutorial to no avail: viewtopic.php?f=71&t=85038

There was a power failure here while I was working on my document (which had been saved many times before over the course of months). Once the power came back on, I turned on the desktop and opened the file folder. There was a pop-up with the language options and then the document opened and was only pound signs. I'm devastasted! I tried every possible solution in the tutorial above and can't seem to make any headway.

A few questions:

1) I had Autorecovery set to ON and my file is not located in the backup file for Open Office. There are other files located there and I noticed they are all PDF's. Why would that be? Are the .odt files located somewhere else?

2) My last resort is to do a system restore on my computer. Do you think that would work? I'm hesitant to turn my computer off as the tutorial advises not to.

ANY help would be GREATLY appreciated. I desperately would like to recover this file.

THANK YOU!!

[RoryOF]

Autorecovery doesn't make a backup file. Ideally, after an unexpected failure of OpenOffice or the computer, the next startup of OpenOffice will attempt an autorecovery. This is not guaranteed to always work, as there are so many variables in a program or computer crash.

In /Tools /Options /Load-Save /General tab one must have "Always create backup copy" checked for a backup to be created.

I suggest you try either PhotoRec or Recuva to undelete any erased or temporary files. You may need to rename any found to type .odt before inspecting them. They may contain some, all, or none of your data.

[RebornLioness]

Thanks so much for your quick reply, RoryOF. I tried the quick scan with Recuva and didn't get anything. I am doing the deep scan now... fingers crossed. I will keep the forum posted on my progress. Thanks!

[RoryOF]

You may possibly have an earlier version, not yet Saved over, in the folder in which you originally saved it.

For any serious work we strongly recommend you should make frequent timed/dated backups. Install and use the timed/dated backup extension. You can download it from
viewtopic.php?p=406045#p405921

Note that you must invoke it separately using its button; it does not replace the standard save mechanism.