Urgently need help with Outlook 2003 question

  • Thread starter Thread starter c02homer
  • Start date Start date
C

c02homer

One of my bosses worked on an Excel spreadhsheet that was an attachment
to an email ALL DAY yesterday, saving as she went, only to answer the
question "do you want to save" when closing the email with a No. I'm
sure everyone knows that if you don't save at that point, the changes
made to the attachment are gone.

My question is: if she was saving all day long, where do those changes
go? Is there ANY way to locate a temp file or some other footprint of
the Excel spreadsheet? She was literally in tears when I talked to her
- it was a day's work she cannot afford to lose..

Any and all help will be HUGELY appreciated!

Thank you!
 
One of my bosses worked on an Excel spreadhsheet that was an attachment
to an email ALL DAY yesterday, saving as she went, only to answer the
question "do you want to save" when closing the email with a No.
Click to expand...
My question is: if she was saving all day long, where do those changes
go? Is there ANY way to locate a temp file or some other footprint of
the Excel spreadsheet? She was literally in tears when I talked to her
- it was a day's work she cannot afford to lose..
Click to expand...

Depending on what exactly she did the changes could be gone forever.

Outlook gives you lots of chances NOT to do this. First you are asked if
you want to open or save the file. Hint: Save it to a folder and only THEN
open it. Particularly if you are going to work on it all day!

Assuming she didn't do that and just chose to open the file right off the
email. Excel will issue a warning when you try to save because the file is
set as read-only. If you accept saving it as a copy, it brings-up a window
where you get to choose where to save it and under what name.

In other words, it takes work to screw it up. If you are going to work on
an attachment all day, it stands to reason that you should save it somewhere
and then put in the hours.

Having said that, this is how you may be able to get your file back. This
assumes that she didn't do anything dumber (sorry) than the above:

- Go back to the email with the attachment
- Double click the email
- Open the Excel file (don't choose save)
- You'll see the file as it was before any of her changes
- Now choose "Save As"

You'll see a whole bunch of temporary files. One of them should be named
something along the lines of "Copy of X" where "X" is the name of the
original attachment. That's the file you want.

Read this carefully and understand the steps before you continue or you
could loose the file forever:

- Click on the file you want to recover ONE TIME. All you want to do is
highlight the name.

- Now, right-click on this file to open the context menu.
- Click on "Copy".
- Cancel the save operation

Now, minimize everything so you can get to the desktop. You can do this by
simply clicking on the "Show Desktop" icon right next to the "Start" button
(lower left of screen).

- Right-click the mouse somewhere on the desktop and choose "Paste"

The file is now available on the desktop. Open it and see if it is the one
you wanted. If so, save it immediately somewhere more sensible than the
Desktop.

Hope this helps,

-Martin
 
Thank you for your assistance! I will try this on Monday. I'm not real
optimistic that it will work for her because I have looked through
virtually every folder on her pc looking for a possible temp file. I
did so with all system and hidden files displayed so I don't think I
missed anything. I know she opened and closed the attachment several
times before she called in a panic and that may be why there are no
usable files. But I will try, nonetheless, as this is more info than I
was able to get from Microsoft Support! Thank you again!!!
 
Hi c02homer,
Just out of interest, all temporary files that outlook uses for attachments
can be usually found in the "c:\documents and settings\<USERNAME>\Local
Settings\Temporary Internet Files" folder. If you search in here for excel
files or for files that were modified during this timeframe you should be in
luck. I've seen this before and this is how we resolved the problem.

Hope this helps and have a fantastic day
-Kevin McAleer
 
One of my bosses worked on an Excel spreadhsheet that was an
attachment to an email ALL DAY yesterday, saving as she went, only to
answer the question "do you want to save" when closing the email with
a No. I'm sure everyone knows that if you don't save at that point,
the changes made to the attachment are gone.
Click to expand...

The changes are not saved in the message in the PST, but they are saved.
My question is: if she was saving all day long, where do those
changes go?
Click to expand...

They go to the "Outlook Secure Temp Folder". They may still be there.
Is there ANY way to locate a temp file or some other
footprint of the Excel spreadsheet? She was literally in tears when
I talked to her - it was a day's work she cannot afford to lose..
Click to expand...

She should open a command prompt window and enter the following commands
exactly as they appear:

cd %UserProfile%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
dir /a

Look for a folder whose name starts with OLK. Let's say she finds OLK24E.
She can then open Windows Explorer and, in the Address field, type the
following, exactly:

%UserProfile%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK24E

where "OLK24E" is, of course, the name of the folder she found above. She
should then see her saved spreadsheet, if Outlook hassn't cleared that
folder, and it may not, since Outlook 2003 has a problem clearing that
folder on occasion.

In the future, best practice is to save the attachment to My Documents or
some other Windows folder, and make the changes there. An Outlook message
store is NOT a file system and shouldn't be used as such.
 
Kevin McAleer said:
Just out of interest, all temporary files that outlook uses for
attachments can be usually found in the "c:\documents and
settings\<USERNAME>\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files" folder.
If you search in here for excel files or for files that were modified
during this timeframe you should be in luck. I've seen this before
and this is how we resolved the problem.
Click to expand...

Two things wrong with what you say. The first is that Outlook doesn't store
its temporary files directly in the Temporary Internet Files folder, but in
a subfolder of that. Second, the Temporary Internet Files folder is special
and Windows won't allow you to search the subfolders of that folder. I just
tried this to make sure, opening the Outlook Secure Temp Folder to see what
it contains and then searching for one of the files I saw. Search could not
locate the file, although I had enabled the options to look in system
folders, search hidden files and folders, and look in subfolders and
performed this from an Adminstrator account.
 
Thank you, Brian. Unfortunately, there was no recoverable file - but
this info is enormously helpful.

Many Undying Gratitudes and Thanks to everyone who responded!!!! ;o)
 
Back
Top