Lost file after recovery

[cul]

Hi, I have a massive spreadsheet with 6 years of work in it. It seems I have lost the last couple of days worth.

My file is set to save every 20 minutes which is annoying but I always felt necessary with the amount of work contained in it. Anyway. I leave my computer on at all times and have been working/saving for days. I went to watch a movie tonight and came back to a rebooted computer. I go to recent documents and its not there so I launch open office anyway. It offers to recover the file. I agree. 4 files open. I close the ones I dont want. Its not there. I close all libre office files and try again. recovery works this time and i do some more work for 20mins.

then I realize this is not the saved file. this is some 3-4 day old file. disaster. I close the file without saving to open the real file. This time I open something that's even older. 6 days old. What the hell is going on?!

Its supposed to save every 20mins and does! Where do I find my correct up to date file?!

Please help!

[Hagar Delest]

If you're talking about the Save AutoRecovey information, it is intended for crash only. It does NOT actually save the file. It seems that it can still lose data if your recovered file did not contain the lastest information.
If you've not made any manual save (icon or Ctrl+S), then no luck.

Personally, I've never seen any difference with or without this feature. Except that it locks AOO/LO during the operation (a "false" save). Thus I've disabled it.

[John_Ha]

Hi, I have a massive spreadsheet with 6 years of work in it. It seems I have lost the last couple of days worth.

My file is set to save every 20 minutes

See [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete AOO temporary files for detailed instructions on how to

a) use Previous Versions (W7 and later) to recover previous versions of the file (is there something similar on MacOS and Linux?);

b) recover your file as it was when you last opened or saved it, or as it was when it was last saved with AutoRecovery;

c) find previous versions of the file in the folder it is located in, but which have since been deleted;

d) find any temporary files AOO wrote while you were editing the file but which have not yet been deleted;

e) un-delete the temporary files AOO wrote while you were editing the file, and then deleted. d) and e) will recover your file as it was when you last opened or you last saved it.

If you cannot follow the instructions ask someone with more PC skills to help you. Act quickly - the longer you wait the more likely any temporary files are to be deleted.

[cul]

Doing some deep scans with recuva. I did have AutoRecovery set to ON but theres nothing in the backup folder right now. Hopefully recuva can dig out a deleted version.

[John_Ha]

I went to watch a movie tonight and came back to a rebooted computer.

Never, never, never walk away from a PC without saving your work.

All edits are held in memory and, if Microsoft boots the PC as part of an update, all edits will be lost.

[cul]

Any chance a system restore back to the 9th will have a better version of the saved file? My current one is from the 6th somehow and I save every day. I wonder if its something to do with the resilio sync program I use, but checking in the guts of that and there are no more recent version there either.

[RoryOF]

Save the version you currently have to an external device, then chance the system restore. If you find a new version, good. If not, you have the older one on the external device and can reload it.

As John_Ha says, always Save before leaving a computer: Ctrl S will save a file, and should become instinctive.

[cul]

Yep. Agree on the saving. I honestly though thats what the program was doing when it filled the green bar every 20 minutes. I didn't realise it was making a recovery file and not a real save file.

[RoryOF]

You should consider installing and using timed/dated backups. The timed/dated backup extension can be downloaded from

http://flowcont.hu/LO_oxt_store/oxt/tim ... v1-2-0.oxt

Note that you must invoke it separately using its button; it does not replace the standard save mechanism. This extension also works on OpenOffice.

[Hagar Delest]

Yep. Agree on the saving. I honestly though thats what the program was doing when it filled the green bar every 20 minutes. I didn't realise it was making a recovery file and not a real save file.

You're not alone. Many users are misled by this feature.

[John_Ha]

I honestly though thats what the program was doing when it filled the green bar every 20 minutes. I didn't realise it was making a recovery file and not a real save file.

Think about it. You edit for a few hours and get multiple AutoRecovery saves. You then decide you don't like anything you have done today and you don't want to save any changes.

The original file needs still to be there ...

[robleyd]

Cross posted to AskLibreOffice.

If you cross post, please let us know that you have done so, otherwise it leads to several discussions and a waste of time because several identical answers may be posted by different users.