Temporary save files and their accesibility

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chrisjnelson20
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Chrisjnelson20

Hello,

We recently altered an Excel workbook and have subsequently saved it, we
have since found that ideally we would take step back in time and not make
the changes we have.

I have looked around the discussion topics only to be disappointed by some
of the replies stating that what I’m asking is impossible. But here goes
anyway:

It is my understanding that when Excel saves it has a randomly named
temporary file that it saves to, upon successful save the file is renamed to
that of the file you are working on and the previously saved file is deleted.
With that in mind surely there is A) a directory this files ends up in prior
to "true" deletion and more importantly B) the ability to access it as it
doesn’t pass though any other third party software before disappearing.

This may sound incredibly naive but applying some logic to the problem there
has to be a way around it, if only to view the previous sheets prior to
amendments being made.

Any help would be greatly received, Chris
 
If you do a search on say "file undelete utilties" you'll get a bunch of
hits. This is the first one I got:

http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/

The "office" in the name does not seem to have anything to do with MS
Office, btw. That's okay because your's is not an Excel or Office issue.
It's simply - can a deleted file of any kind be recovered? Sometimes it
seems it can but the longer you wait the less likely is it. I would
certainly give long odds against it because the space allocated to the
deleted file is available for Windows to write other files and it seems
likely Windows will have used it. Also, Excel is resistant to opening files
that are not perfect. If you could recover say 90% of a text file that
would be good because you could actually use that 90%. But if Excel sees
anything wrong with a workbook file it rejects it. So it pretty much has to
be perfect.

--
Jim
"(e-mail address removed)"
| Hello,
|
| We recently altered an Excel workbook and have subsequently saved it, we
| have since found that ideally we would take step back in time and not make
| the changes we have.
|
| I have looked around the discussion topics only to be disappointed by some
| of the replies stating that what I'm asking is impossible. But here goes
| anyway:
|
| It is my understanding that when Excel saves it has a randomly named
| temporary file that it saves to, upon successful save the file is renamed
to
| that of the file you are working on and the previously saved file is
deleted.
| With that in mind surely there is A) a directory this files ends up in
prior
| to "true" deletion and more importantly B) the ability to access it as it
| doesn't pass though any other third party software before disappearing.
|
| This may sound incredibly naive but applying some logic to the problem
there
| has to be a way around it, if only to view the previous sheets prior to
| amendments being made.
|
| Any help would be greatly received, Chris
|
 
Jim,

Thanks for your reply, you appear to have hit the nail on the head with
regards to what i'm trying to achieve. The numerous save points made since
the file was "as we want it" have all been made today and no ther programs
have been used incl any internet usage, this I hope has to increase the
chances of us finding the data. As for its ability to be re-opened who knows!
I guess we'll find out if the file is ever retreaved!

I have downloaded the file you refered to and it found eight .tmp files
which only three opened to show a usable text ofrmat but referred to the
software that had just be installed !! lol!

Guess its back to the drawing board for me!
 
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