Recover overwritten file

[Guest]

Dear All,

I have managed to do something stupid... I saved a file with the same name
as an existing file and have overwritten the existing file. It was an Excel
file and I was asked if I would like to replace the existing file with the
new one, in a moment of complete madness I said 'Yes' when I actually meant
'No'.

I have had a look at a few freeware file recovery applications but they seem
to only be able to recover files that were deleted in the normal way i.e. by
emptying the recycle bin. Has anybody got any suggestions/ideas/words of
wisdom of how I may be able to recover the lost data?

Yes - I know I should have a backup, but guess what... I don't .

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[Mike Williams]

Dear All,

I have managed to do something stupid... I saved a file with the same name
as an existing file and have overwritten the existing file. It was an Excel
file and I was asked if I would like to replace the existing file with the
new one, in a moment of complete madness I said 'Yes' when I actually meant
'No'.

I have had a look at a few freeware file recovery applications but they seem
to only be able to recover files that were deleted in the normal way i.e. by
emptying the recycle bin. Has anybody got any suggestions/ideas/words of
wisdom of how I may be able to recover the lost data?

Yes - I know I should have a backup, but guess what... I don't .

Any help greatly appreciated.

Your chances are slim, since you explicitly *overwrote* the previous
version of the file.

 

[Jon]

Dear All,

I have managed to do something stupid... I saved a file with the same name
as an existing file and have overwritten the existing file. It was an
Excel
file and I was asked if I would like to replace the existing file with the
new one, in a moment of complete madness I said 'Yes' when I actually
meant
'No'.

I have had a look at a few freeware file recovery applications but they
seem
to only be able to recover files that were deleted in the normal way i.e.
by
emptying the recycle bin. Has anybody got any suggestions/ideas/words of
wisdom of how I may be able to recover the lost data?

Yes - I know I should have a backup, but guess what... I don't .

Any help greatly appreciated.

Winhex might help, but you'd probably need the services of a data recovery
specialist.

http://www.x-ways.net/winhex/index-m.html

Jon

 

[All Things Mopar]

Today =?Utf-8?B?TWF0dGhldw==?= commented courteously on the
subject at hand

Dear All,

I have managed to do something stupid... I saved a file
with the same name as an existing file and have overwritten
the existing file. It was an Excel file and I was asked if
I would like to replace the existing file with the new one,
in a moment of complete madness I said 'Yes' when I
actually meant 'No'.

I have had a look at a few freeware file recovery
applications but they seem to only be able to recover files
that were deleted in the normal way i.e. by emptying the
recycle bin. Has anybody got any suggestions/ideas/words
of wisdom of how I may be able to recover the lost data?

Yes - I know I should have a backup, but guess what... I
don't .

everyone resolves to create regular backups right /after/ they
lose an important file. learn from this experience and backup,
backup, backup. if your original file was overwritten by
another file, especially one not at all like an Exel
spreadsheet, you're toast. do you have a printout? if yes,
start typing! and, besides backing up regularly, while you're
working on a long project of /any/ kind, periodically save to
a /different/ file name like "excel1", "excel2", etc. that
way, if one of them somehow is corrupt you can go to the one
earlier and save at least some work. blow the old one away
after you're /sure/ your latest version is OK and /after/
you've backed it up to someplace other than your excel folder.

 

[Talahasee]

Dear All,

I have managed to do something stupid... I saved a file with the same name
as an existing file and have overwritten the existing file. It was an Excel
file and I was asked if I would like to replace the existing file with the
new one, in a moment of complete madness I said 'Yes' when I actually meant
'No'.

Don't use excel much, but I seem to recall that the default
setting is that when Excel or Word opens a file, it
AUTOMATICALLY makes a backup and renames the backup with an
extension like .bkf (backup file)

Go to the default data directory and look for a file that
looks like the one you overwrote, with the same general time
stamp (if you did this on Monday, the 10th, look for the
same filename with the 10th as the date stamp and a .bkf
extension. Copy that file to your desktop and rename the
copy with the normal extension. (I forget what extensions
Excel uses, and I'm too lazy/busy to look at the moment).

That's one option.

Now if you have turned off the default "automatic backup",
you may just be sol.

And don't do a whole lot more work in that folder with
similar file names, or you could REALLY screw yourself up.

Finally,


B A C K U P !!

This is PRECISELY why backups software was invented!


But it doesn't work if you don't use it!

Wondering why you chose the option to not back up your work.


Good luck!


Tallahassee