Calc Crashed Erasing Months of Data

[jdk90042]

Had a spreadsheet with all tax and receipt info going, separate pages per month, detailed cross-referenced formulas, and it crashed today - selected 'recover now' and it opened with all formatting, data and formulas GONE. Kicking myself for having this doc on dropbox instead of getting regular time machine backups but was sharing with 2 computers. I assume there is no further way to recover this?

Crashes seem to be coming more often when pasting in banking activity from bank websites- banks only give you a pdf now, which is impossible to copy in, so I have to drag/copy from the activity tab, - links, icons and formatting are really ungainly, and hard to get rid of in Calc. Any ideas on improving that process also welcome..

Thanks,

J

[John_Ha]

1. Dropbox keeps previous versions of files so recover one - log on to the website.

2. See [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete AOO temporary files for detailed instructions on how to

a) use Previous Versions (W7 and later) to recover previous versions of the file - is there something similar on MacOS;

b) recover your file as it was when you last opened or saved it, or as it was when it was last saved with AutoRecovery;

c) find previous versions of the file in the folder it is located in, but which have since been deleted;

d) un-delete the temporary files AOO wrote while you were editing the file, and then deleted. This will recover your file as it was when you last opened or you last saved it.

...banks only give you a pdf now, which is impossible to copy in, so I have to drag/copy from the activity tab, - links, icons and formatting are really ungainly, and hard to get rid of in Calc. Any ideas on improving that process also welcome.

Strip all formatting and other junk from what you copy by using Edit > Paste Special > Unformatted text. PureText is magic and works in all applications.

[jdk90042]

Thanks John,
A friend pointed out dropbox feature after I posted but it's good to see in more detail - I actually did find an earlier version, but several of them made days prior to crash were still opening as totally blank.

Will try edit command also - hoping that solves the problem. I had been selecting all and removing formatting IN the calc sheet, but certain icons remain whatever I tried.

BTW- this is a 15 worksheet document, with not much calculation, but a lot of summing columns and cross referencing expense amount cells to sort by type. No graphics or crazy formatting otherwise, but saving and opening often takes 2 minutes or more. That seem normal? It'd make sense if paste ins were still web format, but I do choose default formatting post-paste...

[John_Ha]

BTW- this is a 15 worksheet document, with not much calculation, but a lot of summing columns and cross referencing expense amount cells to sort by type. No graphics or crazy formatting otherwise, but saving and opening often takes 2 minutes or more. That seem normal? It'd make sense if paste ins were still web format, but I do choose default formatting post-paste...

That's a difficult one to answer though two minutes seems very long. Without seeing the file I couldn't say more other than do some representative tests. If you are sorting 2,500 rows with 10 columns, create a test file with 2,500 rows and 10 columns, with similar contents, and play with it. Is it faster?

Heavily edited files can get tangled so create a new empty spreadsheet and pull in all the other file's sheets with Insert > Sheets from file ... Navigate to the old file and select all the sheets. Save. This removes "tangles". Is it better?

Will try edit command also - hoping that solves the problem. I had been selecting all and removing formatting IN the calc sheet, but certain icons remain whatever I tried.

Paste into Notepad to strips everything and copy the result into Calc. PureText does it without needing Notepad.