How do i recover a document saved directly from download?

Anonymous
2010-04-22T22:35:08+00:00

Hi,

I sent my university coursework to a friend to proof read it. He sent it back with amendments, and i clicked on the attached file in hotmail, and continued working on it, clicking save every few minutes.

However i did not click SAVE AS, and so when i closed the document just now, my entire days work was lost, as it appears to have saved no where. Where had it been saving for the whole day? Can i recover it?

Im currently on windows vista and word 2007.

Thanks

John

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2010-04-22T23:59:43+00:00

You may or may not be able to recover this document since the changes are saved in your Temporary Internet files folder. Note that you can't just open your Temporary Internet Files folder directly and find it due to the way Windows handles your Temporary Internet files but if it's still available, here's how you can get it back:

  1. Open another Word document sent to you as an attachment from an email. If you don't have one, send an email with an

attachment to yourself. (While you should be able to open the same email attachement since another copy of the file is created in your Temporary Internet Files folder, I don't like taking a chance like that.) 2. Click the Office Button, point at Prepare, and then click Properties. The Properties pane will display below the Ribbon. 3. On the far right of the Properties pane you'll see a file path and the document name. Select only the file path and press Ctrl + C to copy it. 4. Press the WinKey + E to open the Windows Explorer. (Or use an alternate method to open it) 5. Paste the copied file path in the Address bar and press Enter.

These steps should put you either in the same location as your revised file or near it. You may need to dig around in other folders to locate it.

Good luck and I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. :-)

~Beth Melton Microsoft Office MVP

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  1. Anonymous
    2010-05-25T16:22:43+00:00

    The appended numbers to the files aren't a recent change. They’ve been there since at least Word 2003. Also, I think you may be forgetting all of the other email applications folks use. Not everyone uses Outlook. And, the issue does indeed occur to those using Office/Outlook 2007 that's been fully patched. As I stated in a previous reply on this same topic, I've even encountered it myself a couple of times and I test it in all of my Outlook 2007 classes. Invariably I have at least one student (and usually more) that doesn't encounter a read-only file and can save changes to the Temporary Internet Files folder when opening a Word document attached to an email. If I have them repeat it again on another attachment then it usually works as expected.The computers are freshly imaged for the class so they all have the exact same configurations. I'm not sure why it happens.

    ~Beth Melton Microsoft Office MVP

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-05-25T06:13:54+00:00

    The problem doesn't exist with Outlook 2007 - or at least I have been unable to create the conditions in Outlook 2007 that would make it do so. I agree about the appending of numbers, but this is a fairly recent change. When the page was originally written, that didn't happen and I would venture to suggest that it is not happening for those who have not kept up with updates - hence the problem that gave rise to the page.

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-05-24T14:42:49+00:00

    Except the steps still don't work for those using Word 2007 or Word 2010. You can't use Open or the Save As dialog box for these versions -- you always end up in My Documents. Also, the folder created in the Temporary Internet Files location isn’t always the same. That is, it may not be named OLK279 and the next email attachment you open may not be opened in the exact same folder. You may need view the contents in other folders in the same area.

    And, if you open a document from an email multiple times the file name is appended with (2), (3), etc. The original isn't overwritten. This is shown in your screenshots, such as the second to the last screenshot. You can see MultiWordList (2).doc and MultiWordList (3).doc which indicates MultiWordList.doc was opened more than once from an email attachment.

    ~Beth Melton Microsoft Office MVP

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-05-24T05:33:00+00:00

    I have revised my web page on this topic. See if http://www.gmayor.com/outlook_attachments.htm now helps?

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