What else don't I know...and where can I find out?

[rmorea]

Hi!

I just made a mistake and lost about 4 hours work. Yeah, I made a
mistake but Windows helped a lot. What happened is, I emailed myself a
Word document, and when I finished editing it I hit "save" instead of
"save as." The system wrote the file back to the Outlook Express
storage area instead of "My Documents." I think if I'd known then what
I know now I could have retrieved the file from the DOS prompt, but it
is too late now. Anyway, I now know about this STOOPID hidden
directory called "content.ie5." I am inclined to take it as further
proof of the inherent evil of Microsoft.

Does anyone know why this directory remains hidden even after turning
all file settings to "show hidden and system?" It is one thing to
default it as hidden, but it is something else to make it impossible to
unhide...


More important, what else is out there like this and where can I find a
detailed summary?

Thanks,

Craig

 

[Doug Kanter]

Time out! Touch nothing. Crank up explorer and search for all files changed
after a certain date or whatever that option is. Are you sure it's not still
there somewhere? You may have to look through a long list, but once you have
that list, you might then be able to narrow it down by sorting on size. Or
something.

 

[DanS]

(e-mail address removed) wrote in @f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Hi!

I just made a mistake and lost about 4 hours work. Yeah, I made a
mistake but Windows helped a lot. What happened is, I emailed myself a
Word document, and when I finished editing it I hit "save" instead of
"save as." The system wrote the file back to the Outlook Express
storage area instead of "My Documents." I think if I'd known then what
I know now I could have retrieved the file from the DOS prompt, but it
is too late now. Anyway, I now know about this STOOPID hidden
directory called "content.ie5." I am inclined to take it as further
proof of the inherent evil of Microsoft.

Does anyone know why this directory remains hidden even after turning
all file settings to "show hidden and system?" It is one thing to
default it as hidden, but it is something else to make it impossible to
unhide...


More important, what else is out there like this and where can I find a
detailed summary?

Thanks,

Craig

Did you delete the original e-mail that had the document attached? if
not, why can't you just re-open that e-mail and then do a save-as from
there ?

Then again, I'm not that familiar with Outlook Express, so maybe it
doesn't update the one in the e-mail database.

Anyway, why would you work on a file for 4 hours and waiting the entire 4
hours before saving it ?

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Craig.

As you've found out, the Content.ie5 folder is not a "normal" Windows folder
and can't be managed by the conventional methods.

One way to look at the files is to open a "DOS" window and navigate to the
Content.ie5 folder. Then type dir to see the 4 subdirectories with names
created randomly by IE. A directory of any of the folders will produce a
VERY long list of files, including many zero-byte files. It always seems to
me that the 4 folders all look alike, but I've not investigated in detail.
The best advice here is "don't fool with something until you understand it",
and I don't understand this area at all. I've looked - but not touched!

Another way is to start IE and click Tools | Internet Options... On the
first ("General") tab is a section labeled Temporary Internet Files. Click
the Settings... button to bring up another screen with buttons to View
Files... and View Objects... The TIF is only slightly less inscrutable
viewed this way, but you might be able to locate your "lost" Word document
by clicking View Files, then the Size column to get the largest files to the
top (or bottom) of the list, so you don't have to sort through all those 1
KB Cookies and other small files. Once you've found the file, you may be
able to Copy it to another folder, from where you can try to load it into
Word. If you can't copy it as a file, you may be able to right-click on the
filename, click Copy, and Paste it into a new Word document. I'm only
guessing here, because I haven't tried such maneuvers; I'm suggesting it
only as an "all other hope is lost" way to attempt disaster recovery.

If you really want to know more about Content.ie5, you can type that into
Google and get over 25,000 hits, like I just did. Google found 6 KB
articles at support.microsoft.com that mention it.

Your better approach may be to go back to your Word document folder and see
if Word's automatically-created backup file is still there and recoverable.
To learn how to do this, visit one of the several Word newsgroups here.

And, if it's any consolation, you're not the only one who has hit Save when
we meant Save as... :>{

RC

 

[Doug Kanter]

(e-mail address removed) wrote in @f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:


Did you delete the original e-mail that had the document attached? if
not, why can't you just re-open that e-mail and then do a save-as from
there ?

Then again, I'm not that familiar with Outlook Express, so maybe it
doesn't update the one in the e-mail database.

Anyway, why would you work on a file for 4 hours and waiting the entire 4
hours before saving it ?

Especially since CTRL-S does the trick effortlessly.

 

[rmorea]

Doug,

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, unfortunately, I already did that. The
files don't show up inside this directory even if you search for them
with "find hidden files" checked. They are there, and I did find them
eventually, but by then I had tried some other things and killed the
file.

Craig

 

[Doug Kanter]

Hey...live & learn.

Doug,

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, unfortunately, I already did that. The
files don't show up inside this directory even if you search for them
with "find hidden files" checked. They are there, and I did find them
eventually, but by then I had tried some other things and killed the
file.

Craig