Going back in time in Word?

[aaJoe]

So I made a mistake in a document and saved the wrong versions. A lot
of work is perhaps down the drain - unless I can somehow recover it. Is
this possible after its been saved? (Yes, incremental backups would be
nice right about now!.)

 

[CyberTaz]

Sorry to be the one to break it to you, Joe, but once you *close* the file
you are pretty much out of luck if you weren't using the Versions or Track
Changes features. Regardless of saving frequenly you could have used Undo to
return to any point & Save As to make your various copies. Once the file is
closed, however, the Undo history is erased.

 

[JosypenkoMJ]

So I made a mistake in a document and saved the wrong versions. A lot
of work is perhaps down the drain - unless I can somehow recover it. Is
this possible after its been saved? (Yes, incremental backups would be
nice right about now!.)

If fast save is turned on, changes are saved in the file. Eg., if a
paragraph is accidently deleted, the deleted paragraph is only marked
as deleted in the Word file. One can find deleted stuff in such a file
by opening it with a text editor such as BBedit or MPW. However, the
file is a binary combination of text, commands, pictures, etc.. - one
has to do some work trying to find things. About the only thing
recoverable is text which will be intersperced between stange looking
command characters, etc.

 

[JosypenkoMJ]

Also forgot to mention a disk recovery tool such as Norton Disk Doctor
can help to recover erased files, either the real file or in worst
cases if it can't be recovered or found, one can look for a block of
disc space for some text pattern that was in the lost file. This is
tedious and requires one to remember some of the missing text. Since
the OS will not always rewrite a same file on the same spot on the
disk, there is a chance an older version of the file or part of the
file sitll exists on the disk. As an example, once I did a search for a
text pattern from a lost file and found 3 disk blocks that had the
missing text. It took 2 hours.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Good thought, but this is not the way the modern Fast Saves facility
works...

We strongly recommend that users never have Fast Saves turned on, because it
rapidly corrupts any document for which it is left turned on. It also makes
"saves" slower on a modern computer. It's an old mechanism left over from
very early versions of Word that could safely save to floppy disk. Modern
versions of Word should never risk saving to floppy disk, because it is
likely that the file will corrupt and you will then be unable to open it at
all.

Moreover, in modern versions of Word, the operation of Fast Saves has been
changed. Every ten saves, or every time you save to a different file, or
when you close Word, modern versions of Word perform a "Full Save".

That removes the previous editing data you were looking for. So I recommend
that we no longer advise users to do anything other than turn Fast Saves off
and make sure it stays that way

If you have NOT closed Word, the "temp" files generated during editing will
still be available in the temp folder. You can open these using Word's
Recover Text from Any File utility on the Word File>Open dialog. If you do,
and if they do contain text, you will see it.

However, these files are deleted if Word closes normally.

Cheers

If fast save is turned on, changes are saved in the file. Eg., if a
paragraph is accidently deleted, the deleted paragraph is only marked
as deleted in the Word file. One can find deleted stuff in such a file
by opening it with a text editor such as BBedit or MPW. However, the
file is a binary combination of text, commands, pictures, etc.. - one
has to do some work trying to find things. About the only thing
recoverable is text which will be intersperced between stange looking
command characters, etc.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Martin]

Good thought, but this is not the way the modern Fast Saves facility
works...

We strongly recommend that users never have Fast Saves turned on, because it
rapidly corrupts any document for which it is left turned on. It also makes
"saves" slower on a modern computer. It's an old mechanism left over from
very early versions of Word that could safely save to floppy disk. Modern
versions of Word should never risk saving to floppy disk, because it is
likely that the file will corrupt and you will then be unable to open it at
all.

Moreover, in modern versions of Word, the operation of Fast Saves has been
changed. Every ten saves, or every time you save to a different file, or
when you close Word, modern versions of Word perform a "Full Save".

That removes the previous editing data you were looking for. So I recommend
that we no longer advise users to do anything other than turn Fast Saves off
and make sure it stays that way

If you have NOT closed Word, the "temp" files generated during editing will
still be available in the temp folder. You can open these using Word's
Recover Text from Any File utility on the Word File>Open dialog. If you do,
and if they do contain text, you will see it.

However, these files are deleted if Word closes normally.

Cheers



--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410