Lost document! Please help!

[JollyBear]

Hello all,

Yesterday I opened a excel document I emailed to myself and spent all day working on it. As I went along I clicked on the litte disk icon at the top to 'save' it. This morning I have discovered that I didn't save the document to my documents!!! I presume that it must have been saved to a temp file somewhere. I've tried searching for it but it isn't coming up.

Is it lost forever?

Please help!!

Can you try saving another attachment and see where it defaults to ?

Thanks LIZS, I've tried that and it takes me to a temp folder but my document isn't there! Do computers empty their temp files overnight or something?

Have you tried opening it again from the email? It might say something like "do you want to merge the changes you made" if it is seeing both the original and wherever it put the saves.

Oh, and I've just checked what my PC would do - it would be saving it to C:\Documents and settings\my name\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK3

Have you tried searching for the document?

Sometimes on the start up menu there is a icon saying Recently Used Documents. Is it there?

Thank you for all your replies, I do appreciate it.

I've tried opening it again and it just opens the first version. I've tried looking in the temp files and it doesn't seem to be there. My start menu doesn't have a recently opened documents bit! I wish it did.

Am I going to have to do it all again?

Have you tried searching for *.xls through your whole system, in case it's not got the real file name? I think there may also be another file extension used for autosaves - I'll see if I can find out what it is.

Thanks, I'll try that now!

The only other thing I've found is that it might possibly have been saved as a .tmp file, so you could try looking for all of those with a date of yesterday.

No luck with the .xls. Am trying the .tmp files now. If I find one will it open as an excel document or do I have to do something special to open it?

I've found at .tmp file which could be it but it won't open. It asked me what program I wanted to use to open it and I chose excel.

Sorry I can't think of anything else to suggest there - if Excel won't open it I don't know what else you can do

It looks like I'm going to have to start again.

Thanks everyone for your replies especially amuminscotland, it was really nice of you.

did you save it back to the email?!
You can do this apparently - it send me mad the first time I discovered that.

Open another excel file, (anyone will do) and then select 'save as' from the drop down menu under file.

Is your document showing in the window that opens? If so, it is in the OLK file as AMum says.

Then go to that file through Windows Explorer.

Hope you find it!

Thanks for these suggestions but I'm afraid it is still missing. I will be saving my work diligently from now on!

can you search for all files modified since a certain point?
You might have to tick a box saying "Search system files and folders"