Document Locked by "Unknown User." Displaying ####

[Han]

Hello,

I have two documents which I can't seem to access. All of my other documents are fine (I'm a freelance writer, and I have tons of documents), but whenever I try to open one of the two documents, a popup appears that says that the document is locked by an "unknown user." I don't share my documents with any other users; I'm the only owner.
This ASCII Filter thing appears, and then I have the option to view my document in "read only" mode or to view a copy for editing. No matter what I choose, the document opens up and displays pages of ########. No words, just a bunch of these: #####. Does anyone know what's going on, and whether or not this can be fixed?

Thank you very much.
~ Han

[RoryOF]

Regretfully, your document is corrupt. If you upload it to the Forum someone will have a look at it and see if anything can be salvaged, but best to expect nothing.
see: [Tutorial] The Dreaded Pound Signs: file reduced to ####.

I hope you had backups.

[Han]

Thanks.
Is this a common problem? I write regularly on Open Office, and I don't actually know how to backup a file. I don't mind much losing these two documents, if they actually are lost, but I have some very important things on Open Office.

[RoryOF]

For any important work, such as The Great American Novel, it is good to manually make timed, dated backups. For my major work I copy the current version after a writing/editing session to MyNovel <date><time>.odt. Best to use ISO format 201701181920. That way I only lose the last editing session if there is a file corruption, whether caused by a system crash or an over-hasty closedown of the computer before the internal housekeeping of OO is complete, I also copy those backup files to another computer on the house network. In /Tools /Options /Load-Save you should check "Always create backup copy"; you should also work in .odt format.

[Villeroy]

Thanks.
Is this a common problem? I write regularly on Open Office, and I don't actually know how to backup a file. I don't mind much losing these two documents, if they actually are lost, but I have some very important things on Open Office.

Data corruption is a problem since the beginning of the computing era. Backups are the solution. Since todays users become more and more computer illiterate, cloud solutions promise to keep all your data safe and warm and accessible to anybody with enough power.

[Han]

Thank you both. I'll check up on my documents and see if they're backed up.
I don't know if I have Cloud. To be entirely honest, I'm still not sure what it is. I'm working up to it, but computer literacy isn't my forte yet.

[chips.and.salsa]

I realize this is a very old thread but this issue is still occurring in 2017 so posting in case anyone else stumbles upon it looking for a solution I found this one on a previous board and had at least a partial solution. I tried the program called recuva and did the deep scan and sure enough the prior day version was there. Yesterdays version is better than no version. Learned my lesson and have the back up checked and will email to myself each time.

Source(s):
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17677&p=81363&hilit ... ags#p81363

[chips.and.salsa]

I had luck with Recuva to get the past version from yesterday. Better than no version.

[John_Ha]

For others searching See [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files for instructions on how to identify and un-delete the temporary files Writer wrote while you were editing the file, and then deleted. You should be able to recover your file as it was when you last opened it or as it was when last saved with AutoRecovery. You may also find previous versions of the file in the folder it is located but which have since been deleted.