Computer savy people...I''m stuck.

[luckystar112]

I have a test today...
My prof sent us a review in Microsoft word.
I opened it up, answered all the questions (took hours), and saved it (I THOUGHT in my documents).
Well, it''s gone today.

I think I accidentally saved it in a temporary file or something...but I can''t even find it there. I don''t know what to do now and I''m freaking out. I do know I hit the save button multiple times though, so it''s got to be saved somewhere I think. I tried searching by the title and found nothing.
Anyone have any ideas?

I have vista, btw.

I''ve already tried going to OC/users/me/ but then there is no app folder, which I think there is supposed to be.
I''m so lost.

 

[Cleopatra]

Yikes!

Have you opened the Word program and click on FILE. At the bottom of the drop down menu, it should show a list of all recently opened documents - it should be there if it was saved....although, I''m not what you consider "computer savy"....Good luck!!!

 

[sklingem]

LS-
you could search for the file and select "all files" and specify that it was modified today.
There should only be a few files and then you can check which one is the correct one. Open it and save it again. Good luck!

 

[luckystar112]

Date: 10/2/2008 1:46:58 PM
Author: Cleopatra
Yikes!

Have you opened the Word program and click on FILE. At the bottom of the drop down menu, it should show a list of all recently opened documents - it should be there if it was saved....although, I''m not what you consider ''computer savy''....Good luck!!!

It''s not there.

I have no idea what happened to it.

 

[sklingem]

Did you try searching for it???

 

[pyramid]

I have just got Vista and I don't know much about it, but lost word documents a couple of days ago and then found them in my Pictures folder, still don't know why. This may be a silly post but thought on the off chance you could look there. (Maybe just something foolish I did though saving my word document).

 

[strmrdr]

do a search for *.doc
that will list all the doc files then you can look for one modified yesterday.
Other thing you can do is go to run and type %temp% and look there.

 

[luckystar112]

Thanks for the suggestions. I think it''s a lost cause.

I did search for it.

I also opened up the original file and clicked "save as" to see where my computer would put it. I found the other file there and sent it to my desktop. But when I opened it it was just the review questions without my answers. I think if that WAS the file I was looking for, I messed it up by earlier hitting "save" to see where the file would go. That probably erased my file with my original answers and replaced it with just the questions again.

Sigh.


Guess I''m just going to start cramming again.

 

[ljmorgan]

luckystar, try this:

At the bottom left side of your screen, click on the Windows icon, and go to "search." Click the "advanced search" option and next to "Location" select "everywhere." Under "show only" choose documents, and in the upper right hand corner, enter a unique word or two that would be in the document. Vista''s search functionality is cool because you can search for terms IN the document automatically, you don''t need to know the file name or location. Good luck!

 

[ljmorgan]

By default Vista only searches indexed location, so please be sure to choose that "everywhere" option. Also try selecting "include hidden files, non-indexed" etc as a temporary word save may be a hidden file.

In the future, you can go into options in MS word and tweak the autosave feature -- set it to autosave your work every 2, 5, 20 minutes etc.

 

[Cleopatra]

Was the original file emailed to you? If you opened the document out of the email as an attachment, and click save after you edit - doesn''t it save to some sort of email file?

I''m sooo not a techy - I''m just brainstorming!

 

[Shoopy]

Did you look in your recent documents? Start->My Recent Documents

If not then here's what you do. Go to the email again and right click to save as. When it does that it will save it in your temporary internet files. Before saving it, look through that folder and see if a document with that name already exists. If it does then remember the file path (you can go up to the arrow on the top and see the file path). Typically it'll be My computer, C:, Documents and Settings, your user name, local settings, temporary internet files, and then be in one of those folders.

What happens is that when you open it from the internet, it saves it in those TIF files and unless you hit save as for a specific location it'll still be there.

Good luck!

 

[Shoopy]

Date: 10/2/2008 2:29:23 PM
Author: luckystar112
Thanks for the suggestions. I think it''s a lost cause.

I did search for it.

I also opened up the original file and clicked ''save as'' to see where my computer would put it. I found the other file there and sent it to my desktop. But when I opened it it was just the review questions without my answers. I think if that WAS the file I was looking for, I messed it up by earlier hitting ''save'' to see where the file would go. That probably erased my file with my original answers and replaced it with just the questions again.

Sigh.


Guess I''m just going to start cramming again.

Oh never mind I just saw this

School sucks sometimes.

 

[pyramid]

Date: 10/2/2008 2:29:23 PM
Author: luckystar112
Thanks for the suggestions. I think it's a lost cause.

I did search for it.

I also opened up the original file and clicked 'save as' to see where my computer would put it. I found the other file there and sent it to my desktop. But when I opened it it was just the review questions without my answers. I think if that WAS the file I was looking for, I messed it up by earlier hitting 'save' to see where the file would go. That probably erased my file with my original answers and replaced it with just the questions again.

Sigh.


Guess I'm just going to start cramming again.

Did you answser a question, saying this file already exists, do you want to replace it? Otherwise it should not overwrite the document.


The picture files I am speaking about in my previous post I notice are MHTML and HTML files. They would be: *.HTML AND *.MHTML

 

[VRBeauty]

Unfortunately I do this all the time... being a slow learner when it comes to really practical things!

Here''s how I''ve solved it in the past (as in just yesterday).

1) use the search function from a file index page, using the search by date option, or

2) re-open the document from the same e-mail, and then use the "save as" to find out where it would have been saved.

BTW for future reference, if you intend to work on a word document that was sent to you in an email, it''s safest to immediately save it to an approvpriate file, and then make your changes in the new document.

I hope you find your work!

 

[strmrdr]

If you open it again from the web or email it creates a second copy.
It is most likely in %temp%

 

[luckystar112]

Thank you everyone for your help. I did try everything recommend. There were some good suggestions that I hadn''t thought of, so thanks. Unfortunately, none of it worked.

It''s my own fault, as when I was trying to figure out where the file went and I saved the blank file without changing the name (acutally it had the [1] after it but I deleted it so that I would get the "already have a filed named..." message, but for some reason it didn''t. I''m sure that by doing that I erased my file and replaced it with the blank one.

I have basically been scramming to fill out the answer again. I noticed on google it has that "one result already saved to your computer" function, and when I clicked it, it was the blank questions.

Oh well.
The silver lining is that most of the terms I needed to remember are easy "pork barrel", "fillibuster", etc.
It''s the actual foreign policy questions I was stuck on.
I''m going to keep my fingers crossed!

Thanks for your help everyone.

 

[dragonfly411]

Lucky star - some files have to be saved to your computer (go in to file, click save as, and CHOOSE where you want it saved) BEFORE you save changes you made, otherwise it won''t save....

 

[pyramid]

I just discovered my missing documents were not word documents but web page documents.


Hope all goes well with you.