MS Word question

[luisr]

Hi there! I have a question about MS Word 97 that I hope has a positive answer. I was working with a document that had several images in it along with some titles. It was a huge 13 MB document.

I was trying to make a smaller version with just one picture for the purpose of sharing a sample of this document with a co-worker via e-mail. By mistake I clicked the save button in the toolbar instead of using the Save as... function. Before doing anything else I went to Norton Unerase to try to find the original version of the document but for some reason it could not be found anywhere. Perhaps the fact that it was in the desktop has anything to do with it.

However, I still think the original document can be recovered in some way. The file size remained the same at 13 MB even though it only shows one picture. The images might still be somewhere in there. I saved the same document under a different name and it came out as on 1.8 MB in size, so I hope that the original still has the pictures somewhere.

Is there a way to recover them from the original file?

There is another copy of the same document that is unharmed but it is at work and I don't have access to it from home.

I am using Windows 95 (soon to be XP) if this is of any help.

[archie]

Try a search in c:\ for *.doc ... next time, make a backup and save the document with another filename before working on it and as you go along, even every 10-15 minutes, always with a slighly different name [could be just the change of a digit at the end].

[luisr]

You did not answer my question.

[archie]

**Moving from General Discussion to Windows ME/98/95 Help**

[glc]

Archie tried to answer your question.......

Try a search in c:\ for *.doc

[luisr]

I did not consider that an answer because I mentioned in my original post that I clicked on the "Save" button in the toolbar. This option saves the file in its existng location, so the original was replaced.

The question arises from the odd fact that the file retained its original size even though I removed part of its contents.

[archie]

Just this week, a client was in a similar situation as this and saved a doc on top of its good copy and ended up with a blank page. She did a search, found something, opened it, and MS word 97 somehow recovered the file. I do see now that there is a backup copy of this doc at work so the urgency to get it back is not so much an issue.
As for the file with less content but of the same size, it's hard to tell without seeing it and trying a few experiments. Could it have been saved in a different version of word?

[luisr]

Well, the urgency was there because I planned to do some things with the document during the weekend at home.

Both at home and at work I used the same version of MS Word.

[Chris in U.K.]

Hi Luis,

In Word, go tools - options - save. If the 'automatically create backup' box is checked, you may be in luck. The backup would be saved to the same directory as the original document.

If you over-wrote the long document with the short one without backup, I think you have had it, as overwriting is different from erasing.

Good Luck,

Chris.

[glc]

A possible reason for the file size not changing is that you have "allow fast saves" enabled.