Urgent! Help! Anyone know of some software that will recover an overwritten word file?

[bubba1]

[Mobi]

 I think  I may be doing this recovery wrong. I have been looking on the D Drive because that is where I saved the file. But all the M/S word programmes, folders ect and the temporary files etc are stored on the C  drfive.

 

I have set my recovery tools to scan the D drive, but maybe I should set them to scan the C drive. 

 

Anyone?

[lostinisaan]

4 minutes ago, Mobi said:

 I think  I may be doing this recovery wrong. I have been looking on the D Drive because that is where I saved the file. But all the M/S word programmes, folders ect and the temporary files etc are stored on the C  drfive.

 

I have set my recovery tools to scan the D drive, but maybe I should set them to scan the C drive. 

 

Anyone?

 

 

   You should look on your drive C. All the autosaved files are on that drive, so it does make sense. 

 

        Can't make things worse, right?

[Mobi]

I just recovered about 90% of my text, spread over a notepad document that scrolls forever over to the right, in between loads of gobbledygook, with much of the text continually repeating. But it's all there – more or less - but will take an hour or more to reconstitute properly in a Word doc file - but it sure beats the heck out of having to start over.

 

Phew…

 

I even have the part of the text that's missing, as it was on the document that I accidently overwrote it on.

 

I 'll never know how I did it, I as playing around with so many recovery tools, none of which seemed to work properly, and quite by chance I followed the root used by one of the files that some software recovered (the wrong file).  I came across a load of TMP files that were all created at 8.30 pm tonight and hidden deep in the appdata folder– several hours after I overwrote the file, so a piece of software must have put them there….maybe…

 

Anyway, folks, thanks for all your suggestions and moral support, it was very much appreciated.

 

I'll go to bed mow.

[JamJar]

Of course you are choosing to save any recovered files to a completely different destination...aren't you?

 

For instance an external HDD. Do not output to either the C: or D: drive, lest you overwrite.

 

If you haven't tried these before, look here; https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word-mso_windows8/recovering-word-document-that-was-mistakenly-saved/d676c704-3ed3-4a13-ab30-649e6ac1cef4

 

and here, if necessary

 

http://www.easeus.com/resource/recover-saved-over-office-file.htm

 

If all else fails, use PhotoRec. Download, save, unzip and run to a USB Flash drive, not your machine.

Go into the testdisk 7.0 folder and right click on the qphotorec_win application and choose to run as Administrator.

Once the interface has opened, choose the drives/partitions that you want to scan, choose to Extract Files from the whole partition and then select a destination for the recovered files. This MUST be a destination other than the drives where the file was originally saved. Now click on File Formats. Deselect all options by choosing Reset and select only the .doc option.

 

Once complete....

 

Now you are ready to begin scanning by choosing Search

 

Expect it to run all night.

 

[JamJar]

Aaah...good. You have recovered it already.

[Get Real]

To OP: Great for you. I hope everything turns out alright. Just always make 2 saved documents in the future with different names.

To "The typewriter man" (Bubba1): It is you that should start with the typewriter. First you write: "What does it take to change the essence of a man?" after "I need time to change" approx. 1000 times each. After that you can go over to a computer and repeat the procedure. Maby you actually are a "Bubba".

[Mobi]

On 17/12/2016 at 1:00 AM, JamJar said:

Aaah...good. You have recovered it already.

Thank you jam jar - I will keep your post for future reference - not that it will ever happen again....

 

But as somebody posted, with multiple files open, it is always possible. I'm in my 70's now, and I can be forgiven for the occasional 'senior moment.'

 

For the record, the recovered file, in notepad format, was an inglorious mess. It contained endless repeats of corrected/edited text along with masses of hieroglyphics.  Altogether there were 32,000 words for a 5,000-word document. My initial problem, when I first converted it to a word file was that there were spaces between each letter and double spaces between each word. This took me a couple of hours to resolve, and I finally found a post dating back to 2003 on a tech forum which gave me the solution, which was all to do with using 'find and replace' in a series of unlikely steps, which actually worked.

 

It then took me another 8 or so hours to get the text back to its original state. All told, it took me much longer to recover and fix the document than it did writing it in the first place. But as those who do creative writing know so well, it is almost impossible to re-write a lost piece of text and it it will never contain the 'creative spark' of the original.

 

So I am well pleased, and have learned a valuable lesson.

 

Once again many thanks to all of you who suggested solutions and gave me support. Even to Mr 'typewriter man' for the amusement he gave us.

 

Mobi 

[ChristianBlessing]

OP, congratulations on recovering (mostly) your work. For future reference, MS Word auto saves tempory files, roughly every 10 minutes or so, in this directory: C:\ Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Microsoft. The file names are cyptic, and you'll have to choose Word as the program with which to open the file, or it will default to Notepad. This sounds like your scenario. Word embeds a lot of "docutype" code in its files which would explain the gobbledygook.

Cheers

Sent from my ASUS Chromebook Flip C100PA using Tapatalk

[Mobi]

16 hours ago, ChristianBlessing said:

OP, congratulations on recovering (mostly) your work. For future reference, MS Word auto saves tempory files, roughly every 10 minutes or so, in this directory: C:\ Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Microsoft. The file names are cyptic, and you'll have to choose Word as the program with which to open the file, or it will default to Notepad. This sounds like your scenario. Word embeds a lot of "docutype" code in its files which would explain the gobbledygook.

Cheers

Sent from my ASUS Chromebook Flip C100PA using Tapatalk
 

 

 

Thank you. I'm not an expert but I'm 99.9% sure this will not work for OVERWRITTEN files - i.e. the file has been replaced with new data and then saved by accident. I delved deep into the temp file and backup directories (via appdata)  of M/S before I posted the problem,

 

Deleted files are relatively easy to recover, as you have stated, but overwritten files are a real pain. You need some software that can find and reconstitute the overwritten file. And then it is a matter of luck, how much of it you can recover.

[Mobi]

39 minutes ago, RachielDoff said:

try EaseUS. I use it for recover files

Yes, I tried the free trial. After spending hours on a deep scan, I was then told I had to upgrade and pay before the software would produce the recovered file. With no guarantee that it could in fact recover the file I was looking for, I elected not to pay them any money. And I finally found it from another recovery software for free.

 

I have used EASETODO back up software for years to back up my files, but lately, it just crashes every time I try to use it - despite reinstalling, so I have given up. They seem to be very aggressive in trying to get me to pay some money - I have dozens of emails from them in my spam folders.

 

There's plenty of free back up software around, so why pay? I 've started to use 'Personal Backup software', which is quite basic, but works fine for me.

 

Just to be clear - I don't mind paying if I can be sure it will do the job, and I will not get bombarded with daily emails, trying to sell me something else. in the past, everytime I have paid for software it has opened the door for an inundation of emails offering me this or that and trying to persuade me to upgrade to the next level etc.

 

It used to drive me mad, so I prefer to use free software - at least if they bombard me with emails, I can't complain because I got it for free, but few ever do. Easetodo is a notable exception.

[ChristianBlessing]

 
Thank you. I'm not an expert but I'm 99.9% sure this will not work for OVERWRITTEN files - i.e. the file has been replaced with new data and then saved by accident. I delved deep into the temp file and backup directories (via appdata)  of M/S before I posted the problem,
 
Deleted files are relatively easy to recover, as you have stated, but overwritten files are a real pain. You need some software that can find and reconstitute the overwritten file. And then it is a matter of luck, how much of it you can recover.

@Mobi, I'm sure you're right. Like you, I'm no expert in using Word and I've not worked with it in some time. Interestingly, I recovered from a similar issue as you, several iterations of MS Word ago, when I discovered the revision history feature. Although not terribly useful in this instance it might be prudent to enable it for your future work. Cheers.

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