Apparently this is impossible or next to impossible. Why is that? The
likelihood of the error seems high enough that it would be relatively common.
Why wouldn't Microsoft provide some solution to the problem?
It's almost impossible because the file system can only associate one
file with any given path/filename.
If you're very lucky, the disk sectors occupied by the old file are
still intact, but there's no name attached to them, and they're marked
as available to be overwritten. If you use a special undelete program
that can look at "no-name" sectors, and if you do it before some other
file is written there, then you can retrieve the old data.
Most programs, including all of the Office programs, warn you when
you're about to save over an existing file with the same name.
Microsoft can't do anything about it if you mistakenly say "yes,
replace it" and then say "oops". If the program responded to your
click with "are you sure?" and then with "are you really, really
sure?" you'd be cursing the stupid program -- at least, I know I
would.
So if you've gotten into the habit of not reading those messages and
just clicking OK, it's time to train yourself out of it.
On the other hand, if you haven't gotten into the habit of making
regular backups, it's time to start. See
http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm for a macro that makes
a second copy of every save in Word.
--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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