Recovery of Excel files

  • Thread starter Thread starter johncassell
  • Start date Start date
J

johncassell

Hello, Is there a way to recover an excel file if it has crashed?

I have read some info regarding .tmp files and the fact that they save
without your knowledge every ten mins but

a) I cannot work out which .tmp files refer to which excel files and
b) cannot figure out how to open them


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

John
 
xl2002 added an autorecovery feature that can be turned on by the user. It
saves a copy of the workbook every xx minutes (user selectable).

If excel/windows crashes, the next time you open excel, it sees that file and
asks if you want to recover from the crash.

Before xl2002, there was an autosave addin that you could use. It actually
saved the file every xx minutes (againg selectable by the user). But it wasn't
made to recover from crashes--it just saved right over the file.

Jan Karel Pieterse wrote an addin (works in any version) called AutoSafe (note
spelling).

It doesn't overwrite the existing workbook when it saves. It saves to a user
selectable folder. And when it's done, it either deletes these backups (or puts
them in the recycle bin). And the user can always restore the backups from the
recycle bin.

http://www.jkp-ads.com/Download.htm
(look for AutoSafe.zip, not autosafeVBE.zip, for your purposes.)

Jan Karel's version will know if there was a crash and prompt you to open the
last version it saved.

=======
All these are not retroactive, though. So they won't get your changes back.
But you'll have some tools for the next time.
 
Hi John,

I use Excel 2003 and my AutoRecover is also set to 10 minutes. The
only time the following procedure has worked for me, is when I've
actually had a "crash" during the active use of the Excel program, and
not due to accidentally deleting or closing a file before I had saved
its changes. I'm not sure the following would work for you in your
situation, but maybe it's worth a try? (These procedures are in the MS
Help section, but again, they only worked for me when I had an actual
'crash' - power failure). If I've accidentally deleted a file, I
recover it through my recycle bin on the desktop.

Best of luck to you!
Karen

Recover files

If the Microsoft Office or Office family program you are using is not
responding, recover the program.

On the Microsoft Windows Start menu, point to Programs, point to
Microsoft Office Tools, and then click Microsoft Office Application
Recovery.

In the Application list, click the program or document that is not
responding.
Do one of the following:

To attempt to recover the files you were working on, click Recover
Application or Restart Application.

If you just want to close the program, and lose recent changes to the
files, click End Application

OR:

Open the Office or Office family program.

Review the files listed in the Document Recovery task pane (task pane:
A window within an Office application that provides commonly used
commands. Its location and small size allow you to use these commands
while still working on your files.), and decide which to keep.

If a file has [Recovered] in the title it is usually a file that
contains more recent changes than a file with [Original] in the title.

If you want to view what repairs were made to a file, point to the file
in the Document Recovery task pane, click the arrow next to the file's
name, and then click Show Repairs.

If you want to review the versions that were recovered, open all of the
versions and save the best one.

For each file you want to keep, point to the file in the Document
Recovery task pane, click the arrow next to the file's name, and then
do one of the following:

To work with the file, click Open.

To save the file, click Save As, and then enter a name for the file. By
default, the file is saved in the same folder as the original file. If
you use the same name as the original file, the original is
overwritten. When you see a message asking whether you want to replace
the existing file (with the changes you made up to the last time you
saved the file), click Yes.
When you have opened or saved all of the files you want to keep, click
Close in the Document Recovery task pane.
 
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