Recovering unsaved data on WordPad...

[MatrixDove]

Help! I was typing a letter to my mother, a very important one, contains legal infomation and I have been working on it for days, always saving when done. I was just working on it and the computer stopped entering the text and the sides of the documents the words were out of line with the center, so I didn't save the changes. I thought I could open it andit would pick up where I left off yesturday and I could continue on, but the document is empty! Please help me! Where did it go? Can I get it back?

 

[Ian]

It is quite unlikely that you will be able to recover the information unfortunately. Wordpad doesn't include any recovery features that I am aware of, although others like Microsoft Word do.

There is a small chance that there is/was a temporary file in your Windows "temp" directory that contains at least some information. If you really want to get that information back you will have to go through a data recovery company, but it isn't going to be cheap.

 

[MalcolmW]

Please help me! Where did it go? Can I get it back?

The Computer Shopper cover disk with its September 2006 had a working installation of O&O Disk Recovery. I used it successfully to recover many files from a hard disk of a computer that had failed. As the owner of the computer was keen to maximize the recovery I bought a licence for the latest version of this programme for about £50. To find out more go to: http://www.oo-software.com/

If you contact Dennis Publishing back issues you might be able to get a copy of that issue with the cover disc. Telephone: 0845 126 0389

There is no guarentee that you would recover the the particularfile that you have `lost' and the process of identifying each recovered file is tedious as they are numbered sequentially in the recovered files folder. The filenames are not recovered.

I fould it an interested but time consuming exercise. It became evident at an early stage that the hard disk I recovered from had been used before as the owner did not recognise many of the recovered files. Eventually it was conceded that the computer had been acquired as used but completely refurbished. Some refurbishment when all the previous user's data was recoverable as well as its current user's!

 

[system32_freak]

You can use search and write a few words from the text in the "words or phrase in the file" box and make sure to tick "search in hidden and system files" and hopefully you might find it if it exists. It's not really worth it buying an expensive program to recover one small document, and the chances of it existing are very low so if the method does not work you should consider rewriting it again.