I wonder where all my iWork files went?

[HadItWithWindow]

I have Leopard and an external FreeAgent HD. I have Quicken on the external and all my spreadsheets and letters on the Leopard

I updated one of the six spreadsheets and when I went back this morning everything is gone. No pages (letters) and no spreadsheets. At first I too thought it was the hidden extension but I've tried every type of utility and finder search for file names and documents on both HD and external. NADA.

Any idea how in the world you could lose all your documents?

I have never understood Time Machine. I looked there and tried to reinstall backups from the first of the month but the only thing in Time Machine is the program itself, none of the spreadsheets or letters.

Bummer. I'm still struggling with the conversion from Windows ... Have been using the Mac for over a year now and love it but somethings are difficult to learn after many years on PC's.

 

[Fishrrman]

RE:
"Any idea how in the world you could lose all your documents?
I have never understood Time Machine. I looked there and tried to reinstall backups from the first of the month but the only thing in Time Machine is the program itself, none of the spreadsheets or letters.
Bummer. I'm still struggling with the conversion from Windows ... Have been using the Mac for over a year now and love it but somethings are difficult to learn after many years on PC's."

Some thoughts, in no particular order:

Have you tried using Spotlight to search for the lost documents by name? It's possible that they might be somewhere else, hidden away out of sight.

Having said that, I'm guessing that you're a relative newcomer to the Mac. My advice is to STOP USING Time Machine for a backup, and to START USING either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead.

Either of these apps will give you a better shot at recovering data in an emergency. Instead of clogging up your backup drive with copy after copy of the same file, CCC and SD create "clones" of the internal drive that can be booted from in a dire emergency. Both are very easy to set up and use.

Best of all CCC is absolutely free.

 

[MacDawg]

Having said that, I'm guessing that you're a relative newcomer to the Mac. My advice is to STOP USING Time Machine for a backup, and to START USING either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead.

While I love Carbon Copy Cloner, I also use Time Machine
Both are excellent tools and they approach backup strategies differently
Personally, I want both strategies

 

[FSMBP]

Watch this to understand Time Machine
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#timemachinebasics

Also, on the site - there are plenty of other tutorial videos since you said you are still confused on some things on the Mac. Even long time users of OS X could learn things from the tutorials because the simple things are often forgotten.

 

[r0k]

A lot of programs try to stuff everything in your home folder. This is not a good practice.

Your home folder should be relatively empty and everything should go in Documents or in Movies, etc. If Spotlight finds your lost files, I suggest you drag them to Documents and leave them there. If you keep ALL the files you create in Documents or in folders you create inside Documents, it makes finding them a lot easier.

An exception to this is media files. iTunes will put them in Music. iPhoto will put things in Pictures. But for other documents including iWork and other apps, I suggest you take the time to put the files in Documents.

On a Mac, when you are saving, you are not offered an easily recognizeable way to specify which folder you want to save the file in. If you click the down arrow, you get a bigger/better save dialog and you can browse to an exact location to save your file. Get in the habit of doing this every time because most programs are clueless about where to save things the first time and many of them dump files in your home folder by default. Once you have all your programs "trained" to put things in Documents, or somewhere underneath documents, you can hit the up arrow to once again enjoy the smaller save dialog.