document disappeared

[isle w martin]

I wrote a report last Thursday or Friday using Word 2003 on a new laptop
(with XP). I saved it as I wrote. It was the first document I did on that
computer. Today when I turned on the computer to complete the report, it was
nowhere to be found. I opened Word and it didn't show any recently opended
documents. When I clicked on "most recent docs" there was an icon for the
doc but when I clicked on it, it said that it was a shortcut and didn't point
to anything anymore. I cancelled out of this and tried searching for the
document in all files (hidden and unhidden) for all dates. Nothing at all
turned up. I need to redo the report, I guess, but I am worried the same
thing will happen. Any ideas as to what might have happened? Anything else I
can do to try to find it?

 

[TF]

First thought is are you using exactly the same profile on your laptop? If
you are confident that you definitely saved the document, then it must be
there but perhaps it is in another profile. Unless you are logged in as an
Administrator, your search will not include another profile's My Documents
folder. Word does not delete a user's documents, so this is unlikely to be a
Word problem.

 

[isle w martin]

Thanks. I checked both profiles - nothing. Sigh.

I did remember that after I installed MS Office Professional 2003, I deleted
the trial version of Word 2003 that came with the laptop. Could that have
done something weird? (I deleted it properly using "delete program".)
W Martin

 

[TF]

I presume you mean that you used the Add/Remove programs to uninstall the
Office Trial. This should not have removed any of the user files. I presume
you use the default My Documents, so that is where the document should have
been saved. The loss of the document is most unusual.

Terry

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Try this... open a Command Prompt (Start - Programs - Accessories), and run
the following two commands:

cd \

dir *.doc /s | find "9/07/2006"

If that comes up empty, then try it using "9/08/2006", instead. If you see
the file, note the folder, open Windows Explorer, and navigate to that
location to verify that the file really is there.