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Recover word files

Me1000

Me1000

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 15, 2006
1,794
4
so my mother was using my mac, and she was using word to type something...

of course she never saved anything, and i couldnt get a good description of what happened.

im thinking she did a show desktop expose' then she lost it some how!

Any idea where to look if there is any chance of restoring it?


Thanks
 
smueboy

smueboy

macrumors 6502a
Oct 30, 2006
778
1
Oz
Look in User > Documents > Microsoft User Data at the Autorecovery or Word work files - one of them may be the file you are looking for....
 
Me1000

Me1000

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 15, 2006
1,794
4
In my Microsoft User Data folder i have the following...

Entourage Temp
Microsoft Messenger Data
Office 2004 Identities

and a file calls Normal, (a blank .doc file)
 
smueboy

smueboy

macrumors 6502a
Oct 30, 2006
778
1
Oz
if that is all, then sorry i have no idea - i have autorecovery files and word work files in my folder that are auto-saved by Word as you work. Depending on how the program crashed, it may not have been able to make a recovery file.
 
Me1000

Me1000

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 15, 2006
1,794
4
Thats just it, I dont think it crashed...

She cant tell me anything about what happened, she just said it flew off the screen!

*not to self: never let a non tech person use a customized OS X login*

She has revised the story some...

it did a Genie effect (the same thing that happens in the dock) but went to the upper left hand corner?????
my dock is at the bottom!

word tries to mimic the genie effect but its with the buttons on the right hand side of the toolbar!

She has never used a mac before, so im trying to go through step by step what happened, but the story changes every time!

i mean, I have no idea what happened! in the preferences its suppose to save the file ever 10 min, but i cant find anything!

I told here to save it, but of course dont listen to the son! :rolleyes:
and i tried to give here a crash course on a mac in 30 seconds, but most people can understand that you type in the white box, :rolleyes:

Well She is not in favor of getting a mac for the household, but I think i will change here mind! not that it can make much of a difference to her, because she is never on the computer anyway!

Time to petition apple...
they need 2 versions of OS X; the Normal, and the I dont know WTF im doing!
 
smueboy

smueboy

macrumors 6502a
Oct 30, 2006
778
1
Oz
Now now, dont be blaming OS X for a Microsoft program. :)



So, did Word actually close or not? (i.e. it's not still active is it?) If it closed, and didn't ask to save, then it must have crashed. And if you have auto-save set for 10min and she used word for more than 10min, then i'd expect a file to have been auto-saved at some point. weird.

sounds like re-typing is the way to go.
 
Me1000

Me1000

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 15, 2006
1,794
4
well i told here that it was a M$ problem, and that it did what she told it to do! windows dont just fly away and never come back! :rolleyes:

anyway, I got back to the computer, I opened the lid to bring it out of sleep mode. a blank word document was up.

now she said she was prompted to open the word document from its last saved version, and she hit yes. but she said nothing happened,

she had word open automator open, and text edit open when i got there!
First thing i did was expose'! but no file was there, then i clicked on the open word document, and did a command+z still nothing.

I think it is too late now, but it bothers me that i have no idea what happened! I have never had any problem with anything on this computer, i mean even M$'s programs run well on it! I know it is something she did, I just dont know what!
 
J

Jaimesharp

macrumors newbie
Jan 31, 2007
7
0
The only thing it could be is

it could be that Word crashed and you did not have a location specified for autorecover files so no matter what you do it will not find anything.
 
P

PBwriter

macrumors newbie
Oct 30, 2010
1
0
Need Solution to Recover Word Doc Accidentally Overwritten

I'm jumping into the conversation with the hope that someone knows how to recover a word document from Word:Mac 2008. I accidentally pushed save to the same file name as a previous document I would like to recover. I hope I'm not completely out of luck and that someone has the software recommendation for finding a previous file. I have a MacBook Pro. Thank you for your assistance.
 
S

scott3939

macrumors newbie
Apr 15, 2011
1
0
word doc recovery

gregg2:
I have a similar issue. My wife was working on a word doc, fat fingered the document blank, hit save and now has wiped out about a month's worth of work. No she never printed out a copy. Does the mac save these previous versions of a word doc anywhere (temp file folder?). or has she re-written over top and out of luck.
thx
scott
 
Gregg2

Gregg2

macrumors 604
May 22, 2008
7,184
1,177
Milwaukee, WI
In my Word > Preferences > Save ... I have it set to save AutoRecover information every 15 minutes. I'm not sure where that goes, but I can try to look in Help or poke around later.
 
D

dyland321

macrumors newbie
Apr 25, 2012
1
0
Recover Word Files

smueboy you literally just saved my grade for physics. Much thanks for your reply
 
P

pinto.daniel

macrumors newbie
Jun 18, 2012
1
0
Word Recovery Back Up

Gregg2:

where can I find my back up ?

----------

dyland321:

where did you find your file ?
where was the previous version ?
 
Gregg2

Gregg2

macrumors 604
May 22, 2008
7,184
1,177
Milwaukee, WI
pinto.daniel said:
Gregg2:

where can I find my back up ?

----------

dyland321:

where did you find your file ?
where was the previous version ?
Click to expand...

Gregg2 said:
I have a MS AutoRecover Files folder in Documents. But, there's nothing in it.
Click to expand...

I assume mine was empty because no files had been recovered. The Documents folder should be in the Home folder, that is, your User folder:
HD/Users/YourFolderName. I don't know what you named it.
 
B

barrina

macrumors newbie
Oct 6, 2009
3
4
For those using 2011

For this new version of Office for the mac, I found my files in the following location:
Users/<user>/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Office 2011 AutoRecovery/

I had a super time finding it after Word ignored the document I had focused and didn't want to save and closed a different working document in full screen instead. Gah MS.
 
F

frydaddy

macrumors newbie
Jun 15, 2011
5
0
Having similar problems with lost Word doc. IMO I don't think Word actually saves the file until you close the program. I'm working on my paper and religously saving after every sentence/paragragh/change along with having the program autosave every 5 minutes. Today I'm working on the file and the computer freezes, I get it running again and when Word brings up the files with autorecovery it won't let me scroll through the file, so I click don't save because I don't know what it has in it and I can see the file I was working on, and had just saved before the freeze, behind it. When I scroll to where I had been working, every thing was gone that I had been working on for the last day and last time I had opened Word. I located the files like barrina has posted but the last autorecovery file was from even farther back. And I haven't been plugged into my time machine for a couple days.
:mad: @ms for not actually saving to the file when save is clicked.
 
P

PopiBear

macrumors newbie
Nov 5, 2013
1
0
For those who can't remember how to get to this folder

You saved me about 3 hours of work. I totally wrote over a previously saved file without changing the name. OOPS.

For those who have trouble navigating to this folder you can short cut this by going to the Finder > Go> Go to Folder and typing in ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Office 2011 AutoRecovery. Recent Mac OS's make it harder to navigate to these through the graphics interface.

I am sure this is obvious to some but I don't navigate to the library folder very often. Had to look it up.
 
I

indierebel

macrumors newbie
May 23, 2014
1
0
Solution Found for Future Reference

I saved over a Word document and thought I would;t be able to get it back, and certainly couldn't get it from any way using my system.

Luckily, I save everything directly to Dropbox and when I went to dropbox.com and logged in, I could get all previous versions and was able to download what i had saved over.

I know it won't help you now (unless you do the same), but for future reference this is a life-saver!
 
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