Opened attachment (word doc) and lost changes..

[Lionel Mrocki]

My boss (a self-confessed luddite) has a bad habit of opening word .doc
attachments, getting himself absorbed in making changes to the documents
(in word), saving them frequently thinking he's doing the right thing.
Later on restarting the computer he discovers his changes are gone and
the email only contains the original document.

I presume that as he hasn't saved the attachments to his hard drive,
he's only saving them to a temporary email file. I'm not an outlook
user and am unfamiliar with where outlook stores attachments and other
files.

Is it possible that his changes are still located somewhere and can be
retrieved? (I tried coaching him by phone to use the start menu's "find
files" tool, but couldn't uncover anything promising.)

He's lost a lot of important work. Any tips gratefully accepted!

Lionel

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

When an Outlook user opens an attachment, Outlook copies the file to the
user's hard drive. The exact location varies by user. The easiest way to
check the location is to oopen an attachment and then choose File | Save As.

When the user finishes editing, he needs to save and close the document.
This will write the changes back to the Outlook item (assuming the file was
no opened from the preview pane) and deletes the temporary file.