Recover overwritten Word doc

[Guest]

Assistance please. A friend has overwritten a word doument, and lost a lot of
data and 1 month's work!
Any good, ideally free recovery utilities out there?
Cheers
John

 

[Jezebel]

It's called a hammer. You incise the phrase 'I will make backups' in mirror
writing in the face of it, and hit your friend repeatedly with it.

 

[Amedee Van Gasse]

Jezebel shared this with us in microsoft.public.word.docmanagement:

It's called a hammer. You incise the phrase 'I will make backups' in
mirror writing in the face of it, and hit your friend repeatedly with
it.

LOL
Unfortunately, Jezebel is absolutely right.
Only specialized companies can recover it. Think plenty money. Or an
FBI crime lab.

PS@Jezebel: You should look up "lart" in The Jargon File. It'll give
you some suggestions for better tools than a hammer. And a good laugh.

 

[Opinicus]

Assistance please. A friend has overwritten a word
doument, and lost a lot of
data and 1 month's work!

Is the *.wbk file still there?

 

[Guest]

Could I only have helpful responses please?
Yes, we all know about regular backups, but s**t happens. My friend has lost
a large portion of a Master's dissertation, and is extremely stressed as a
result.
I'll look into the .wbk option. If it is there, what next?
Thanks
John

 

[Guest]

I use a small application called RESTORATION. I got it from a mate at work.
Dont know if its any good to you but if you want I could mail it to you. Its
only about 500k. Feel free to virus check it, to be on the safe side.

 

[Opinicus]

I'll look into the .wbk option. If it is there, what next?

1. IMMEDIATELY copy it to a separate and safe folder.

2. Double-click on the file and Word should open it. You
will see the version of the document before the most recent
changes were made and the document was saved. (Hopefully the
most recent changes didn't include replacing several hundred
pages of text with a single blank space, which happened to
my wife once.) Click on "File" then "Save as" and use a
suitable name.

Question to the group: At least one earlier version of Word
that I used had a "double backup file" option. When you
reopened a file, an existing .wbk would be renamed .wb2 and
the existing one was renamed .wbk. I can't seem to find this
in Word XP.

 

[Guest]

I am no computer wizz, but love to fool around (with my computer) that is,
and have found things long lost in my temporary files....., olk, internet etc.