Please help - Word document emergency

[Mon Ami Mate]

I've been researching and writing a white paper on corporate governance for a client for the last two months. I've just had a computer crash while I've been putting finishing touches to the document, restarted and found all the text missing. I'm running XP. Is there any way of going back and recovering the document? If not, I think I'm going to cry...

[Mon Ami Mate]

pdV6 said:

I presume you didn't just type the entire thing in without ever saving it? Therefore there ought to be some trace of it somewhere. Do you have AutoRecover enabled? If so, has a directory been specified where AutoRecover files are stored? If your file is MalcolmsFile.doc, is there a file called ~$lcolmsFile.doc lying around?

I've been writing this steadily over the last two months, so it has been saved regularly. I don't know about AutoRecover - how do I find out?

There is beer in the successful recovery of this file. Lots of it.

[Mon Ami Mate]

pdV6 said:

Tools -> Options -> Save Check if "save autorecover info every x minutes" is set. Then, Tools -> Options -> File locations And see if "Autorecover files" is set to anything. If yes & yes then look in the folder to see what you can see.

The autorecover is set at every 10 minutes, but the autorecover file doesn't appear to have the document listed.

[Mon Ami Mate]

Thanks for all this. How do I find the temporary folder list? Panicking big time...

[Mon Ami Mate]

I can't over-emphasise how desperate I now am. Just spent half an hour on the phone with PDV6 and things are not looking good. This is a 128 page white paper which has taken me two months to research and write. It has to be with the client tomorrow morning. I think I may be stopping in to slit my wrists this evening...

[Mon Ami Mate]

Plotloss said:

When you open the document that is now blank if you save that document to another location as another document type, say .TXT, does that file have anything in it? What is the size of the document that is now blank? Is it very small 1K or less or is it the right size but corrupt?

It's 1k

[Mon Ami Mate]

egoboss said:

Mon Ami Mate said: I can't over-emphasise how desperate I now am. Just spent half an hour on the phone with PDV6 and things are not looking good. This is a 128 page white paper which has taken me two months to research and write. It has to be with the client tomorrow morning. I think I may be stopping in to slit my wrists this evening... oh bugger, you have my/our sympathies - try and clear your head/deep breaths, get a glass of wine (just one for now though) and try and go through once again all the options that have been suggested. in meantime i will ask around some of my ms-office guru friends for ideas and send on to you if i learn anything relevant. if still no success, finish off the bottle of wine. wish i could think of something else to suggest. fingers crossed for you.

Thanks for the support. I had just finished the document this morning. I did a ctrl A to highlight all the text, so that I could check the formatting. Then the phone rang. As I was talking on the phone the computer switched off - I suspect it was a power cut. I finished the phone call, switched the computer back on, went into the document and found...one blank page.

[Mon Ami Mate]

Just got it back, using the software DOC Regenerator. Thank you all for your advise, I can't tell you how relieved I am...