BIG BOO BOO (Excel 2000)

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I have a user who accidently saved a empty Excel workbook over a important Excel workbook he was just working on. Of course, he hasn’t been backing up this workbook or saving it to a network drive. It’s been sitting in his My Document Folder. Is there any chance the Excel workbook he was just working on is in a temp folder or somewhere else? I have my doubts, but I thought I’d ask.

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Hi Mike,

Depending on your O/S and how much disk writing there’s been since this happened, there’s always a chance that an image of the former file can be found somewhere. The chances diminish with every disk write, so it’s important to do as little as possible (preferably nothing) before attempting recovery.

You’d need a fairly low-level disk utility (eg Norton’s Diskedit) to find and rebuild the pieces, but even then, you’d have to know what to look for. Since Excel files have a binary format, you’d be looking for a sector holding the start of an Excel file with pointers to successive sectors holding other parts of the file. Note too that these sectors won’t necessarily be in any particular order.

LOL

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Thanks for the tip. I’m not willing to go that far. Don’t have the tools and don’t have the time. I just thought if some copy got placed in another folder, I could retrieve it.

Sometimes people need to learn the hard way.

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One last hope…

Check the users system for any file that has a similar size or name.

If the gods are smiling, there may be a file accidently Save(d) As or “Recovered” by Windows.

Good luck,

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Ayup, but best chance is to send the drive to a data recovery service such as http://www.ontrack.com[/url%5D.

Such services usually charge an evaluation fee, which is sometimes waived.
I expect that cost would be (US)$200+.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, STOP using the drive until you determine the path you will take.

OnTrack recovered an entire drive for me a few years ago for about $465 (includes shipping and media).

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Hi Howard
Whilst viewing your post, I was fascinated to see the word “ayup” being used. This is a common dialect word employed by the lower orders in my neck of the woods (Stoke-on-Trent, England) and other Northern England/North Midlands regions. It is frowned upon and often parodied by the gentile society of the South where it is associated with the Heathens from the North. Because it is deemed to be such a “local word”, I just did not expect to see it.

Bostin’

Rob

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Ayup!!

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