Worked ages on Word doc in email. Where is it?

Hi. A colleague emailed me three Word docs, which I worked on for hours. Stupidly forgot they were opened from an email and when I closed them, simply selected 'yes' when asked if I wanted to save them (rather than use 'save as', which of course I should have done). I have XP, OE6 and Firefox. Have searched C/documents and settings/user/local settings (which is faint)/TIF (also faint), where there are several items but no Word docs, and none of them have the right time details. Have also done general Search... zilch. But I saved the docs, so where have they gone? It would be brilliant if someone can help me - otherwise my evening is a right-off, re-doing everything in my own time.:cry: Many thanks, Sue x

 

Hi Sue,

Edit:
Sue, I just realized that you said it saved from Word. You can try opening word, starting a document and, using Save As, look at the folder that comes up by default.

If you still can't find it use the Search again and use as the file names "*.doc" (Word 2003 and earlier) and "*.docx" (Word 2007 and later). That way you'll find all the Word documents.

Below is if you have the same problem from Firefox.

This has happened to me several times when downloading so here are some tips I've learned.

By default Firefox saves downloaded documents to My Documents\Downloads.

If it's not there then open Firefox, and click on the drop down Tools menu then Options.
Click on the General tab and look at the Downloads section in the middle. The box in the middle says "Save files to" and has the folder where the files are saved, just click Browse on the right to see the full path if you need to.

Alternatively you can save another attachment from your email (send yourself one if you can't find any), and look at the folder it saves it to.

I download a lot of files so rather than have to cut and paste them from Downloads to the directory I want, I keep the radio button "Always ask me where to save files" checked and this way I always get a reminder to pay attention. Since Firefox will usually try to save the new file to same place as the last one I keep the "Show the Downloads window when downloading a file" box checked and the "Close it when all downloads are finished" unchecked. This way if I forget to specify a destination folder, I just right click on the file name in the Downloads window and click on "Open Folder" to find the file.

I hope this helped.

 

Here is an absolutely marvellous free search utility which will find your missing files in the blink of an eye -

http://www.voidtools.com/

Install it, wait for it to complete its initial indexation of your drives, and then enter .doc in the search field. That will immediately throw up all Word documents on your computer from any version of Word, including 2007 and 2010.

 

Why mention your browser? If you use OE for email, then your browser has nothing to do with this since the Word file was attached to an email message you received in OE. So, again, why did you mention what browser you're using?

 

Dear Usafveteran. Not sure why you responded the way you did. I was simply trying to be helpful. Regards, Sue

 

Hi Tinutuva
Thanks for your very helpful response. I haven't found my docs (yet!) although I tried your suggestions. I've acted upon your other excellent advice and have changed my 'where to save files' radio button. Many thanks again. Sue

 

Thanks Earthling. What a useful tool. Sadly it didn't find my missing docs so I've come to the conclusion they've disappeared into the depths of my Dell (despite the 'save' response) so it'll just have to be a late night for me. And a lesson learned!

 

I've been testing this in a XP VM and the modified attachment got saved in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\CX6BKDQJ, but only while OE was still open. When I closed OE the modified file disappeared, as yours has done.

 

Yes, but only while OE remains open. When it's closed the attachment reverts.

 

Sue,

I haven't used OE in years (I couldn't even remember what it stands for when I read your email) but I just remembered a similar situation that I encountered and one that I helped my cousin with. By default, OE saves information in a coded format in the same directory as the emails, not as a standard file type. Since you opened Word from within OE, OE might have retained control.

It's possible the modified version that you saved is still there. you might be able to find it by opening OE and looking at the Saved Items folder. You could also try checking the Options in OE and see if it has a section similar to Firefox for what to do when you save a file.

If you find it and you open it in Word, see if it lets you Save As. If not, Copy the text, close Word, then open Word separately (from the Start button or Desktop icon) and paste the text.

Sorry I didn't think of this yesterday to save you having to retype it.

The best thing is to download the attached document and work on it outside of OE.

 

Hmm, maybe I'm just weird but I can open a Word attachment from within OE, modify it, Save it, and then open it again within OE and see the changes I made. The fact to keep in mind here is that the Word file got saved in the Temporary Internet Files (TIF) folder used by IE. This makes sense, doesn't it? After all, OE is bundled with IE, or was up through version 6 of IE. And, I should mention that, in my testing procedure, I opened the modified file immediately after modifying it. If I had waited until after files in the TIF folder got deleted as part of a files cleanup event which normally happens on all Windows systems, then that modified file would disappear. But, the original would still exist as the attachment.

The way to avoid this is to Save the attachment outside of OE before making any changes to it. This can be done via Save As, and selecting My Documents or whatever folder you choose (other than TIF).

 

Sorry, I made a mistake in my previous post. In my brief test, I did not close OE and then reopen it and the reopen the Word file. If I close OE and then reopen it, the Word file does, indeed, lose the changes I made when working with it from within OE.

 

@usaf Your post got me testing it again, but it only confirmed what we now know - if you don't use Save As you lose the changes.

 

Just to be perfectly clear on this, Save As should not be used to simply assign a different name to the file, as it could be; it should be used to save the file to a location other than TIF. The name could be left the same - that's a matter of preference - but the main goal should be to save the file somewhere away from TIF. TIF is a dangerous place to have any file you want to keep.

Also, doing this before doing any editing of the file is the safest approach.

 

This is, of course, "too little, too late" but have you done a search for all Word docs by date (most recent date first)?

 

Thanks for all the suggestions. I retyped it all up last night. In future, I'll do Save As of course. But what I still don't understand is, when I closed the document in OE and was asked if I wanted to Save the document (and I said Yes), what happened to that saved document? If it's only a temporary Save and is deleted as soon as OE closes, why don't we get a simple warning? When I googled my dilemma before posting on this forum, it's clear that many people have made the same mistake. Why doesn't Microsoft fix it? Surely it's simple enough...

 

We exhausted that route in #3 and #7

 

M$ haven't made any changes to OE for years, nor will they. XP and OE are now history Sue.

EDIT - did you try Halo's suggestions in Everything btw?

 

Good question. All I can say is that attaching a file to an email message is just a way of conveying the file to the recipient. Your email client, i.e. OE, is not intended to be a working area for modifying files attached to a message. So, anytime you receive a message with an attachment and that attachment is a file you want to keep on a long-term basis and/or a file you want to modify/edit, you should save it to a regular folder on your hard drive.

When you click the paper clip symbol in OE, the symbol that indicates a file is attached, you have two options: Open and Save Attachments. Note that this save option does not, by default, save the file to the TIF folder, it saves somewhere else. This is indication of what I said above, that the email client is not a space in which to modify attachments.

Edit: I did not see the two posts preceding this one prior to posting. I did not notice the page 2 of posts and overlooked them.