Lost Document

[turtle]

I can't seem to find a text document saved somewhere on my computer. It had been auto-saving while I worked on it. When I closed it, there was no dialogue box asking where I wanted to save it, etc. Searching the entire hard drive as turned up no results. Is it gone forever?

[acknak]

Did you try File > Recent Documents?

If you know the name of the file (or part of it), you can do a search for it.

[turtle]

Tried that. I have an earlier version sent to me via email. If I open that earlier version and then do a "save as" it shows a temporary internet file location and a file--my revised one, I assume--already in that folder. If I click "save" it asks if I want to overwrite the file of the same name already in there. Of course, I say no. But the folder shown on the screen is supposedly in the Content.IE5 folder, in the Temporary Internet Files. But when I try to locate it on the hard drive, the file named as well as the folder OO put it in, just isn't there. This is far too weird for me.

[acknak]

There is a serious flaw in "opening" documents attached to an email. The flaw is that those documents are not files. If you open and edit such an attached document, where does it go? Should it modify the attachment that you started with--like a file does--or something else?

Unfortunately, most email clients (the popular ones at least), avoid the issue and simply write the attached document to a temporary location and arrange for the application open it as if it were a normal file. Then when the user saves changes, it seems to be safe (no errors), but the changes are in a temporary copy of the attachment, which is later deleted--either by the email client when the launched application finishes, or by the system when it cleans out the temporary files.

It sounds like your file may still be in the temp folder, if you could get XP to let you get to it.

The best strategy is simply to remember that opening files attached to an email is risky, and either save the file out of the email before you open it, or save it to a different location (e.g. My Documents) when you first open it.

[turtle]

Now you tell me.
Makes sense, however.
Thanks.

[foxcole]

It sounds like your file may still be in the temp folder, if you could get XP to let you get to it.

If it's still there, you can only get to it if you have enabled your system to view hidden files and folders (Control Panel> Folder Options> View tab, find and select "Show hidden files and folders". Once those are viewable, they will also show up in a search... so I'm guessing this is why turtle's search efforts didn't find the file.

If I open that earlier version and then do a "save as" it shows a temporary internet file location and a file--my revised one, I assume--already in that folder.

There's a Windows trick you can use on just such occasions. You could have right-clicked on that file---yep, right there in the Save As dialog, or the Open dialog or any other dialog that shows a file view---and chosen to open it, from where you can do another save-as to a better location, or you to "send" it to My Documents or another preordained location.