Changes not saved

[Yvette]

I am by no means an Excel expert, however, I am very comfortable with all the
basic functions of Excel. From time to time, I've noticed that after opening
an Excel file, working in it, saving, closing, opening it, performing a Save
As, etc. that there are times it does not save all the work. I habitually use
CTRL+S to save while I work and when I close the spreadsheet window, don't
get a Save prompt, so I am extremely confident I'm saving my work just fine.
For example, I worked on and off in a spreadsheet last week, attached it to
an email, but when I opened the file on my PC the next day, some of the
changes were not there. I then went to my Sent folder, found the email,
opened the spreadsheet I had attached and the files were different (correct
in the attachment, but not on the file on my PC).

Any ideas as to why this would happen? I am absolutely certain it is the
same file, so that's not the explanation. Let's assume I had attached the
file when it was open on my desktop, then sent the email with the file
attached, would that account for it? I would think that when I later closed
the file, if there were unsaved changes, it would prompt me to save them,
right?

 

[Earl Kiosterud]

Yvette,

I can't be certain from your description, because it doesn't seem to fit exactly, but one
possibility is that you attached a saved workbook, worked on the workbook some more, saved
it again, and attached it again to the same email. In that case, if you're using Outlook
Express, you'd get the first save, not the second, in your attachment. You wouldn't think,
but that's the way OE works. OE caches attachments, and attaching an updated file doesn't
result in getting the latest file. Could that be what's happening?

 

[Yvette]

Earl, thanks for your response. Used to live in Virginia Beach myself,
beautiful place, but not as beautiful as San Diego!

I see what you're saying, but, honestly, unless I was hallucinating or very
distracted, that's not the scenario. To be more specific, an Excel
spreadsheet was emailed to me, I saved it to my hard drive, worked on it on
and off for a couple of days, and when I completed the project, I emailed the
changed file back to the person. I will confess I sometimes have my off days,
but I typically don't open an attachment, work on it and then email it back.
I always save the file to my hard drive by a different file name, so that the
original attachment stays as it was. And, I'm very particular about my filing
habits and have designated folders for everything, so there's the spreadsheet
in my folder, but it doesn't have ALL the changes I made which shows in the
re-attached file I emailed back. Too weird. Maybe I just outta drop it and
move on in life! But it's really bugging me...

 

[Earl Kiosterud]

Yvette,

So you saved the received attachment to your folder, worked on it, saving it multiple times,
then attached it to an email to the sender. The attachment had your latest changes, but the
file in the folder was older? Seems impossible, but that's what I'm hearing. Can you
verify?

If you're saving to a network drive, I'd be suspicious that something is amiss, and try
using a folder on a local drive instead.

Each time Excel saves, it saves to a file with a made-up name like 8E23F90B (no extension).
If successful, it deletes the old file, then renames the new one to the original name. If
it has a problem saving the new one, it hasn't trashed the original. When that happens, It
issues a "file not saved" kind of warning and usually leaves the weirdly-named file in the
folder (which I don't think you'll see in File-Open, because of the missing extension,
unless you've put in *.* into the filename box). If you see such weirdly named files in the
folder (use a folder window), then you know it's had trouble saving for some reason.

I go to southern CA a couple times a year. Beautiful, but very defferent from back east,
where it's lush and green in the summer, and bare in the winter
--
Regards from Virginia Beach,

Earl Kiosterud
www.smokeylake.com
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