Botched file save

[joesomebody]

I saved my essay in .odt, remembered that i needed to reopen it and when i tried
to, the program said "document recovery..." Document recovery failed and now i
get three pages of:
########################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################################

I also saved several times while writing the paper and spent more than two hours
on it. There should be many backups of this, but i checked and there are none.

how do i get my file back and WTF happened!?

Is there any other way to open this?

I need this for tomorrow

[RoryOF]

There may be a backup file somewhere under your User profile
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... 74&t=12426

What other applications were you using when you were editing the file?

[joesomebody]

OpenOffice was the only program open, and i have already checked the backup saves as i mentioned above. all of the backups it made over the hour or two i was working on are gone also. immediately after i lost the file i checked the forums and went into the backups, it wasn't there.

Actually, none of my backups are there, i have written at least ten different documents in the past two weeks.

Is there anyone i can send my file to to decode it? is there a program i can use to strip the data from deeper in the file?

I tried Text Edit which usually works but didn't this time.

[Hagar Delest]

Sorry, I think your file is dead: 22 pages term paper replaced with pound signs.

[joesomebody]

I can't send it to anyone at OpenOffice to decode it, or anyone else who might know more?

everything is in the file, but open office won't read it and i don't have any more programs to open it with.

The document is the same size as when i saved it earlier, same characters...

Also, i have done this with numerous other programs and file types, i open it with some kind of programming software, or just a simple text editor and i get @&^&( and symbols like ∏ €€€∏ÅÍÏ˝˝Ó along with useful information, what program would i use to get that?

[TheGurkha]

OOo files are actuaslly zipfiles. If you rename them you can open them with zip or other compression tools and see the files within. If you do that it sounds like you'll see that the contents.xml file within the zip is garbage. If that is the case then there is nothing to be done.

Best to always save important work in more than one folder location, and with different names (version 1, version 2 etc) as you go along, no matter what office suite you use.

[RoryOF]

This probably won't work, but if you wish to try work on a copy of the file. OpenOffice files are zipped collections of files. You could rename the file to type .zip, open it with an unzip utility (sorry - I don't know what that is called on a Mac), and try to extract the enclosed files. The one you require is contents.xml. This will have your text, if you can get it.

If you have done this

i have done this with numerous other programs and file types, i open it with some kind of programming software, or just a simple text editor and i get @&^&( and symbols like ∏ €€€∏ÅÍÏ˝˝Ó along with useful information,

then your system must be severely unstable. You should fix it/get it fixed soonest.

[joesomebody]

when I expand it it comes out as a .cpgz and then as a .zip

i tried this on pc also and it said it cannot be opened as a .zip

[RoryOF]

Then I fear your file is dead.