Missing Excel file in dad's computer. Please help

[TheGenerous]

My dad created an Excel file about a week ago. He claims that when he clicked today on the file in the Recents list on Excel his file disappeared from the list and the file didn't open. The last time he worked on his file was two days ago and his Excel skills are basic so there's no crazy stuff inside and the file is a few KB. He hasn't deleted the Trash, he never does it manually.

I've had no luck doing the following.

- Searching for his file using Spotlight, the Trash, the Recents folder in Finder, Dropbox (and its Recently Deleted files), iCloud.
- Opening the temporary files using Terminal "open % TMPDIR"
- In the temporary files in "/Users/<username>/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Library/Application Support/Microsoft"
- Using Spotlight in Time Machine

What else could I do? Please help. I can't understand how his file is gone. One time, I saw him in person working on the file so it's real, the file did exist.

His computer is Catalina 10.15.7, Excel 16.29.1

Thank you

 

[barbu]

What about the recent folder in Finder?

 

[TheGenerous]

What about the recent folder in Finder?

Thank you for your time Barbu, unfortunately, it's not there. On the other hand, Time Machine doesn't show any records of the Recent folder in Finder

 

[bogdanw]

Any antivirus software installed? It might have quarantined the file for some reason.

 

[Slartibart]

Maybe it’s worth trying to search via the terminal using:

find . -name "*.xls" | grep if_you-remember_part_of_the_filename

this will search in the current folder and all others under it for all files that have the extension xls , followed by a filtering for those that contain if_you-remember_part_of_the_filename on their title.

nota bene: I assume that Excel was quit; maybe it’s worth checking for/repairing file system permissions and possible other disk errors (starting in safe mode and using Disk Utility).

 

[Gregg2]

Have you tried to explore Excel's Auto Recover feature? Here's a (probably dated) video that might put you on track for finding the file (with a more up to date procedure, if you can find one):

 

[Fishrrman]

Here's something you might try (I make no promises).

1. Download "Find Any File" from here:

Find Any File

apps.tempel.org

2. Launch it. It's free.

3. Set it to look for:
- Created date
- is within the last
- 10 (he said "about a week", right?)
- days

4. Click "find".

5. There will be A LOT of files. You need to sort through them.

6. Use the type and date modified columns to "shift things around". You will be looking for "Excel" and ".xls" files (I think).

It will take some poking around, but if the file your dad needs is "still on the drive", you should find it this way.

(If the file cannot be found this way, I'm going to take a wild guess that somehow, he's deleted it)