Recover overwritten parts of word document (that is maybe still hidden in word file)

[Balthasar Glättli]

Hi everybody

a friend of mine using Mac OS X, Word v. X has a serious problem. He seems
to have overwritten some 20 pages of important data in a word file by
accidently hitting Control A (Mark all) and delete. He did not notice this
until having typed another page of text, continously hitting control S
(seems that he has not configured auto save). He panicked, closed the file
and reopened it. Obviously, still only the last page is visible. Word has
not been closed as a program.

My question:
1. is there any possibility to find the lost part of the text? Maybe hidden
in the document? Maybe in a Recovery file? I Remember that I always warned
people that old part of documents can remain in a doc... however I know this
from old Win-Word files, this might have been changed in between.

What I did already:
I told him not to close word. I let him search for "Word Work*" files on the
disk (following a Microsoft Knowledge Base Article): no file found.

Please answer with a copy to my email too.

TNX
Balthasar Glättli
mip at glaettli dot ch

 

[Graham Mayor]

I don't know whether the Mac version of Word offers anything different to
the PC version, but with the latter once the document is closed the changes
are permanent. Otherwise the undo offers many levels of recovery. Neither
are the older versions saved in temporary files, and the chances of
recovering anything useful from areas of the hard disc that haven't been
overwritten are minimal - but you'd need to explore file recover utilities
with a Mac group.

Note too that Word does not have any built-in autosave function. It only has
an autorecover option which is less useful than you might imagine. See
http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
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Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

He has one hope. If he has enabled "Automatically create backup copy," then
he should look for the backup file. In WinWord, this is called "Backup of
<filename>.wbk"; I'm not sure what that would be in MacWord terms. This will
be the immediately previous version of the file. He can open that, save it
under a new filename, then paste in the text he added to the file.

 

[Graham Mayor]

I would have thought that the 'continually using CTRL+S' would have
precluded that as a saviour, but it is certainly worth a look

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Yes, I expect you're right. I missed that.

 

[Clive Huggan]

An explanatory note:

Suzanne and Graham are spot on, of course (they are Windows-based gurus
helping out here while our jack-of-all-trades Beth is away).

In Mac-speak, the PC's Control-a is Command-a and similarly Control-s is
Command-s -- "Command" being the key with an apple and pretzel on it.

The backup file on the Mac is simply "Backup of [whatever the file name
is]".

In relation to normal saving strategies rather than recovery from
self-inflicted injury, this previous post by John McGhie might be of
interest:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Under Preferences -> Save you will find two options. The first is "Always
create backup file". This preserves a snapshot of the file the way it was
when you opened it, as a .bak file.

We recommend that you turn this on.

You will also find "Save Autorecover information every nn minutes". Set
this to your desired period.

Word cannot do a true auto save. The Autorecover save saves enough
information to restore your file if Word crashes. It works quite well, and
should definitely be ON. You should also enable Background Saves,
otherwise you cannot keep working while the Autorecover save occurs.
However, what it saves is not a complete file: only the changed bits. And
they are in a random order.

When you restart Word after a crash, it will find the Autorecover files and
ask you if you want to recover the document. Think carefully: the
Autorecover files are saved independently of any true saves you do.

If the Autorecover save occurred at 10 o'clock, you saved at nine minutes
past ten, and Word crashed at nine minutes and 59 seconds past ten, you will
be offered the chance to replace your saved version with the recovered
version. Unfortunately, the recovered version is nine minutes older than
the saved version.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-- Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia

===============================================================

I would have thought that the 'continually using CTRL+S' would have
precluded that as a saviour, but it is certainly worth a look

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>

 

[Graham Mayor]

Clive Huggan wrote:

Word cannot do a true auto save. The Autorecover save saves enough
information to restore your file if Word crashes. It works quite
well, and should definitely be ON. You should also enable
Background Saves, otherwise you cannot keep working while the
Autorecover save occurs. However, what it saves is not a complete
file: only the changed bits. And they are in a random order.

When you restart Word after a crash, it will find the Autorecover
files and ask you if you want to recover the document. Think
carefully: the Autorecover files are saved independently of any true
saves you do.

If the Autorecover save occurred at 10 o'clock, you saved at nine
minutes past ten, and Word crashed at nine minutes and 59 seconds
past ten, you will be offered the chance to replace your saved
version with the recovered version. Unfortunately, the recovered
version is nine minutes older than the saved version.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-- Clive Huggan

The problem here of course is persuading Word to crash, in order to recover
the autorecover file. It only ever crashes when you don't want it to, and
that shouldn't be very often if set up correctly

The PC version does come with a macro that will provide a true autosave
function. If the Mac version is fully compliant then that macro should work
there too. See my web site link, which explains its use,
http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

<> snipped <>

The PC version does come with a macro that will provide a true autosave
function. If the Mac version is fully compliant then that macro should work
there too. See my web site link, which explains its use,
http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm.

Hi Graham,

Mac VBA is at VBA5, equivalent to Word 97, so since it is supposed to work
there, it should work on a Mac. I *was* automatically assuming it wouldn't.
Perhaps I'll check it out, and begin recommending it.

I used to have a Save Reminder on a previous version of Word (I thought it
came with the program, but not sure) but it was kinda annoying. Excellent
for training me to hit cmd-S all the time, though.

Dayo

 

[Graham Mayor]

Hi Graham,

Mac VBA is at VBA5, equivalent to Word 97, so since it is supposed to
work there, it should work on a Mac. I *was* automatically assuming
it wouldn't. Perhaps I'll check it out, and begin recommending it.

I used to have a Save Reminder on a previous version of Word (I
thought it came with the program, but not sure) but it was kinda
annoying. Excellent for training me to hit cmd-S all the time,
though.

Dayo

It is certainly annoying, but it will do the job. You can configure it to
make the saves for you.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Graham is correct: Mac Word and PC Word do the same thing: close the
document, the UNDO list is cleared and the changes are permanent.

I don't know whether the Mac version of Word offers anything different to
the PC version, but with the latter once the document is closed the changes
are permanent. Otherwise the undo offers many levels of recovery. Neither
are the older versions saved in temporary files, and the chances of
recovering anything useful from areas of the hard disc that haven't been
overwritten are minimal - but you'd need to explore file recover utilities
with a Mac group.

Note too that Word does not have any built-in autosave function. It only has
an autorecover option which is less useful than you might imagine. See
http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Graham Mayor]

Hi John - thanks for that confirmation.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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