Saved .odt corrupted

[Jukebox3282]

I was working on a school short narrative story, then my power went out. I saved it manually about 8 min before the outage. When i open it, it is filled with #'s. Any help?

Edit: If it makes any difference, the restore failed.

[hershel]

You can recover that only if your backup is enabled.

[RusselB]

Being on Windows 7, even if you didn't have the backup enabled, there's a chance of recovering an earlier version.
Note that if an earlier version is recoverable there may (and probably will) be information missing.
Under Windows, not AOO, open the folder that contains your corrupted file.
Next, select the corrupted file, then right click on it and select Restore Previous Versions
There is no guarantee that this will work, but it is an option for you to try.

[Jukebox3282]

Backup was not on.
Downloaded Recuva did a full system deep scan. Searched for the .tmp directory of Open Office, I found no deleted .tmp's. (I do however have some others, not sure how I convert the .tmp into the original text file. Please explain?)
Does not have a previous version to restore to, as that feature is turned off.

The story was 8 1/2 pages long using a size 12 font. I really don't want to have to re-do it, it's going to take me forever...

[RusselB]

The suggestion I made is controlled by Windows, not OO.
Did you try it?
If my suggestion is unsuccessful and Recuva didn't find anything, then I'm afraid you've got no choice but to start over.

[RoryOF]

Outside of OpenOffice rename the .tmp file to the type of file you were using; i.e. tmp -> odt if that is the case. Do not disregard files with arbitrary names such as afzxsx.tmp, as these may be temporary working files holding some of your data.

Edit: A page in 12 pt type single line spaced is about 950 words. In double line spacing say 450 words. Anthony Trollope, a notable British writer (fl1860) composed and wrote 3000 words longhand every morning between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m.. You don't have the burden of composition if your memory is any good, so a rewrite will only take you the typing time. In any case, a second writing is often far more successful than the original.

[John_Ha]

See Re: Suddenly only get ####.... can anyone help me?

Also see Using Recuva to un-delete Writer temporary files for help recovering the temporary files which Writer wrote while you were editing the document, and then deleted when Writer was closed.

The post has been extensively updated [June 2016] to show how AutoRecovery files can be un-deleted for .odt files; for files which have never been saved; and for .doc files.