Might want to explain "...and then it was gone." Did Excel suffer an error
and fail? Or did he close it and try to reopen and couldn't find it? What
happened. Strap him down and apply bamboo shoots to fingernails to actually
find out if necessary! <g>
I suspect he may have inadvertently renamed it? Might do a search for all
files created within the last 2 or 3 days and see if anything turns up - and
actually examine the files that it does turn up. If you don't see anything
with an Excel-like file name (.xls, xlt, .csv, .txt) try double-clicking the
others to see if they open in the expected application. Any that doesn't
open as it should (as a .doc file not opening in Word), look at closer and
try giving it an added .xls at the end of its name and seeing if it'll open
in Excel .... yes he may have altered the name that much even accidentally.
This search needs to be done on "My Computer" and it needs to look
everywhere, even in hidden and system folders to make sure you don't miss it.
Do you have an old copy of it that was used to generate a quote that you can
clean up and use as the basis for a replacement? No matter, you should also
give consideration to implementing a strong backup strategy to prevent
similar tragedies in the future. My own setup at my workplace allows me to:
replace anything on the company's 2 servers with a copy no more than 2 hours
old,
replace anything who's 2 hour copy is corrupted with any of the previous 5
workday's copies, and if that's not good enough, I have a weekly backup of
all critical business files on DVDs for weekly intervals going back almost 3
years now - the time I implemented the backup strategy for the company.
For my own desktop system at the office, for files I work with on my system
from local drives: I have backups of new/altered files created once per hour
- those go to a second HDD on the system, so the failure of the primary drive
doesn't put me out of business with any files I haven't moved to the server
yet.
