having a tidy up before i return a computer - finding old word documents

[btwo1]

hi.

i've borrowed a computer and i wanted to make sure i wiped off any documents on there i may have worked on whilst using this. is there an easy way to do this? i have a fairly good idea when i borrowed the computer and i have mostly used word documents.

suppose you could try forums for a computer magazine - though people on here are often very helpful

You can search for files of any name and type, which were written since a certain date. Exactly how you do that depends on what version of Windows you are running, but you go into My Computer, or Windows Explorer, and look for a search option - you'll probably need the Advanced Search. I've got Vista, and on there I start doing any search and then it pops up with an offer of Advanced Search.

If you use Windows Vista (this may also work on other versions of Windows)

Start, Search,

type in:

.do

That will then list all .doc, .docx (both are formats which Word often uses), plus anything else that has a .do????? extension - which may or may not be word documents.

In the search results box that appears, change the View to Details.
It now shows the list with columns for size, date, things like that.
You can now sort the list based on date modified, by clicking the heading of that column.

As Word will save in a variety of formats it is impossible to know exactly what formats you may have saved things in. But this process should produce you at least some of the documents - perhaps all of them if you do not tend to play with SaveAs settings in Word.

You could do the same for other file types, such as PDF, if you download things off the internet or get sent documents from work which are in that format.

Ah... Mumsnet formatting affected things.

Ok, so type in:

"star dot D O star"

[.do] without the brackets!

Deleted documents can be retrieved by someone who knows what they're doing (or even someone who knows how to use google). If you want to make sure they're completely destroyed, use something like Eraser.