Recovering "lost" Word document?

Werdnal

My son completed a 1000 word school project over half-term. He came home tonight and said he'd print it and have a last read through before he handed in next week. Opened the file and its completely blank :eek:

I have done a search to see if he saved it under another file name, and cannot locate it anywhere. He last accessed it about 10 days ago and it was fine then. Every time he's added some more work, he's saved it, so even if the last time he forgot, it should have had the previous saved data on it. I'd understand it if the whole file had disappeared into cyberspace, but cannot understand why its still there but lost all the text and photos. He's natrually gutted at the thought of doing it all again (I've said he should dictate it to me and I'll type it as I am quicker - cheating I know but poor little b****r has done it all once!).

Just wondered if there is an outside chance we could recover it somehow. Any ideas please?

free4440273

u could try using recuva (free). also try searching just part of the name of the doc. if it was called 'seventh grade essay', search just only for seventh ...

neilwoods

On Word is Always create backup copy enabled. If so, there may be a backup saved in the same folder as the original file with same name but have file extension of .wbk

scheming_gypsy

Do a search for *.tmp. If it's crashed and wiped it out there's a chance it's left a temporary file behind, you'll have to filter by date and see if there's one around the last time it was saved / accessed.

googler

Can you think of some text that would be contained in the document?

Your son's name? Class number? School Name? A title or heading?

Search for files containing that text.

Where was it normally saved? My Documents? What else is there?

exprog

Werdnal wrote: »

I'd understand it if the whole file had disappeared into cyberspace, but cannot understand why its still there but lost all the text and photos.

Bet you 50p he opened a new blank page; remembered he hadn't saved the essay; did a 'save as' on the blank page thereby overwriting the essay; closed it all down in a rush; hurried off to do something else.

macman

I think I already know the answer to this, but do you not have any sort of back up system for your data files?
If not, then sooner or later you'll lose the lot.

bigdave196

What version of Word? What version of Windows? What's the file size of the file?

neilwoods

Guess the OP is not in that much of a rush after all

mart44

googler wrote: »

Can you think of some text that would be contained in the document?

Your son's name? Class number? School Name? A title or heading?

Search for files containing that text.

Where was it normally saved? My Documents? What else is there?

A good idea. I find a free search utility called 'Agent Ransack' very useful for this kind of search:

http://mythicsoft.com/page.aspx?type=agentransack&page=home

BackOnTrack

You might be able to get this back.

1. Open word
2. Goto File menu and choose "open"
3. From the "Files of type" drop down box choose "Recover text from any file(*.*)
4. Double click on your sons word document

If this doesn't get the text back then your probably stuffed.