Seriously?? There's nothing I can do...

[BeastyBoy]

I had eleven pages of a novel I am working on. My cat jumped up on my tower this morning and he shut it off by accident. When I started my computer back up, I received the message saying that my document is locked by an unknown user. I get the # signs...eleven pages of # signs mocking me.

So, I have tried:
renaming the file
zipping the file
checking the backup
checking the temporary files
deleting my user profile
deleting the locked icon on my desktop
restoring the document to a previous version (there were none)

I am an avid saver. When I saw he jumped up there, I hit ctrl-S quick, knowing he has the tendency to shut off my computer. I have NEVER had this issue with Microsoft Word, wordpad or notebook, so I didn't even know something like this could even happen. How can I completely lose a file that I saved??

From now on I am going to save to a thumb drive as well obviously. Of course, if I had know this was possible, I would have done this in the beginning! Someone, anyone, please tell me there is SOMETHING I can do. I just can't accept the fact that I have to start all over.

[RoryOF]

Look in the OpenOffice temp directory and rename any files of about the correct time/size to type .odt and see if they open. A second writing will be better - it is all in your head, isn't it?

No dinner for pussy tonight?

[BeastyBoy]

All I see in the temp folder is document_io_logring.txt. I changed that to odt, but as is says it is a log. Any other suggestions?

More anger towards OpenOffice than my cat at the moment.

[floris v]

Your file is lost, sadly. See 22 pages term paper replaced with pound signs.

[BeastyBoy]

Yeah, I've read that post already. Was hoping for something that could actually recover my document. Uninstalling OpenOffice as we speak. Two days of writing down the drain.

[RoryOF]

It is possible (just) that an Undelete utility will recover a partial file, depending on how much use you have made of your computer in the interim.