[Solved] How to "recover" my documents

[Thamior]

Sometimes when I open up one of my saved documents all of the work I have done is replaced by #'s. This has happened to me a few times and I was wondering if there is a way to recover my documents if this happens. I had just done like 10 hours of work yesterday and i opened my document to find everything replaced by #'s.

[Zizi64]

Sometimes when I open up one of my saved documents all of the work I have done is replaced by #'s.

How and where you save your documents to?

- Do not work directly on a portable device.
- Do not store your important documents in foreign file formats. Use the native, International Standard ODF fileformats.
- Always create more than one backup of your files onto different places.

[Thamior]

I save my documents to my computer (When I am on the document I press CTRL+S, then go to this PC, Documents and into a file).

[Zizi64]

Your signature is:

OpenOffice 3.1 on ACER

Which AOO/LO version are you using now really?

[RoryOF]

I save my documents to my computer (When I am on the document I press CTRL+S, then go to this PC, Documents and into a file).

Ctrl S Saves the document, but it is best that you either close the document (/File /Close) or exit OpenOffice, (/File /Exit) which will prompt you to close the document; a document is held open until one of these commands is executed. If the computer is powered off too quickly, or allowed sleep with a file open, that file will be destroyed as the system gets confused with what to do with it.

[Thamior]

OpenOffice 4.1.1.
I didn't check because I needed to get the question out as quick as possible so I could get help.

[MrProgrammer]

Hi, and welcome to the forum.

I was wondering if there is a way to recover my documents if this happens.

Did you enable option Load/Save → Always create backup copy? If so, there is a copy of your document as it was the last time you opened it in the directory named in option OpenOffice → Paths → Backups. Options are set with OpenOffice → Preferences on a Mac, Tools → Options on other platforms. Using your operating system, copy the backup document to a safe place. Make a copy of that, then change the file extension .bak to the appropriate one (.odt, .ods, etc.). Open the renamed file.

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can select the green checkmark icon at the same time.

[UnklDonald418]

A Calc spreadsheet column will display #'s when the column width is too narrow to display a numeric value. In that case just make the column wider.