Lost word document

[Val G]

I spent all day typing up some notes for my MPhil on a PC at work. I saved the document to my personal network area but when I looked for it later to email home I couldn't find it. I reopened Word and it wasn't in the recent documents. I'm trying not to sound dumb or desperate but any ideas how to find it?.........probably lost and gone forever...boohoo!

[jayuk]

Val

Go to your "MY RECENT DOCUMENTS" in the Start Menu (if you have Windows XP)

WHere did you save this document? Network Share at uni etc?

J

[Val G]

Jay

I don't think it's XP. I'll try looking in recent documents again in the morning. My personal area is on the hard drive of my lab network.

Thanks

[John Smith]

You could do a search by content using something like Google Desktop, but that will struggle if the file has been saved on a network share before the installation.

There will probably be something residing in a temp. directory; or if you were editing the document as an attachment, you could find it saved back to the email in Outlook!

[Matthew_]

If you use the windows search, (Start /Search / for files or folders) you can specify that you search the whole network or specify your shared area. Under the 'look in' option there is a drop down, it should list all the drives. If you keep the serach quite broad and specify some words from the title, that is best in case it has saved it with a slightly different name.
Don't despair! I'm no IT expert but I'm sure it hasn't disappeared forever. I was paranoid about this sort of thing when I was doing my MBA so I kept a copy on my IPOD, just stuck it in the back and saved it on there. You can get a memory stick for about £10 now aswell, which will probably hold the whole file and its a lot easier than saving onto CD. Sorry if you already know this!
Good Luck and let us know how you get on.

[Val G]

Thanks for the advice. I had another look today and got one of the IT guys on the case, but no luck. It was only about four pages, but that's a lot for me, my progress with this seems to be one step forward, two steps back at the moment. Never mind I had nothing better to do tonight, other than sit in front of the TV and stuff my face. I'll try to re do it while it's relatively fresh in my mind and then I'll just have to get over it. I've bought myself another memory stick so I've got one at hame and work just in case.

[Andrew MacLean]

I don't know if Windows will allow you to do this sort of thing, but I can search my hard drive by "date last modified". This can be a help because I frequently mis-type the name of a file I am saving (you see I am quite ecumenical about mis-types and do not reserve them exclusively for the forum), and then put the file in the most improbable "folder".

Being able to search by date last saved, and then to segregate files by file type, at least gives me the option to trawl through all the word I did on a particular day.

If only Knight were here, he would know for sure what to do.

Andrew

[Val G]

Thanks Andrew

The IT guy at work helped my to do just that, still no joy. I think something could be wrong with that PC cos I'm not the first one to have lost stuff on it. I re did the work, sort of, on friday night, so I'm starting to get over it now.

[Matthew_]

Val,
Having just finished my MBA thesis I can really relate to how you must feel. My computer got a bit iffy towards the end. It is a 3Ghz machine powered by a normal desktop intel pentium 4 processor so it got seriously hot and the fan really couldn't cope with 12 hour sessions. A couple of times it wrapped its hand in and my heart was in my mouth as tried to recover 120 pages of information. It got to a point where I saving onto my IPOD after every other line of text. Typing until 4 in the morning with KC is not as enjoyable as it sounds either!
Good luck, keep going. Its amazing how it just comes together in the end.

[jayuk]

Matthew

Where you doing your MBA and have you speclaised in anything?

Jay