[URGENT] Word document problems

[Happy Luppy]

Hi!

I'm using OO (OpenOffice) to write my essays. Unfortunately, i am not writing it in English but in Chinese. Today i just basically screwed it up. When i started writing it i first saved in .odt and later i saved it in .txt and unicode format. I thought everything's gonna be fine so i deleted the .odt files and had cleared the trash bin but that's where the nightmare began.

I went to the printing shop to get the essays to be printed but their windows computer couldn't "read" the chinese characters and it all turns out as "?" sign. I thought it was only a windows problem but when i went back to open it in my MBP, it's all "?" too.

So i quickly installed a data recover program and i am just praying that i can recover the .odt files I would be dead if my essays are totally lost. Anyway, the question is: What extension is best to save a Chinese word document? AND, I just deleted the .odt files yesterday, do you think there's still a chance for it to be recovered?

Would really appreciate the help and suggestions

 

[maflynn]

unfortunately if you cleaned out the trash the odds of recovery are slim. I'd google file recovery utilities for OSX and avoid using the computer until you can try those utilities.

 

[bobnugget]

So i quickly installed a data recover program and i am just praying that i can recover the .odt files I would be dead if my essays are totally lost. Anyway, the question is: What extension is best to save a Chinese word document? AND, I just deleted the .odt files yesterday, do you think there's still a chance for it to be recovered?

Would really appreciate the help and suggestions

I think you would be best using a recovery program such as TestDisk/PhotoRec - they are available for the mac. The best way to use it would be to remove your disk from your system and connect it to another - so that you don't boot from it and overwrite your ODT files.

Bear in mind that the ODT files are in fact ZIP archives, so they may be recognized/recovered as ZIP archives. You can then rename them to .odt, and they will work, if they were recovered successfully.

 

[mbburn]

Data Rescue 3. Has worked for me before. I take it you aren't backing up with TM/CCC/SuperDuper?

 

[combat]

I hope you can recover those, in the future use something like Pathfinder, or Forever-save. To make sure this doesn't happen again. Best of luck...