NOO!!!!! HELP!!!!!!
 

Ok, heres the deal...I've been writing this 15 page paper all day and I've done 12 pages...my computer shuts off because of a power failure or something. I CANT FIND THE PAPER!!!!!!!!! I looked in word to see if it did a auto-roll save thing and it only has 4!! pages. DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO RECOVER THIS FILE???

Should have saved more frequently.

No shit...but I can't go back in time.

I feel our pain. Wish I could help...

you're SOL

Look at the bright side. What you wrote was probably complete shit. Now, you have the opportunity to write it in a newer, fresher way!

Is it in MS Word? Word usually saves every 15 minutes or so, IIRC.

Search through the directory that you saved it in, search through all the word processer folders, pray there's something that looks like a backup.

Otherwise, as they say in ebonics. You be fucked.

I feel your pain greatly, Sharpie, since my computer has a tendency to overheat and shut off at will, which made writing my 200 page thesis an interesting challenge.

As somebody said, if you were using MS Word, it auto-saves every now and then and will ask you if you want to open the document the next time you start it up (at least, Office XP does), because it will have some recovered version.

I don't know much about other programs, though.
My thoughts are with you.

~tk

MS Word auto-saves only if you have it checked in the options, so if Sharpie doesn't have that set and if he didn't save, he's probably SOL.

However, since the computer shut down without (I'm aussimng) shutting down the applications, there's a chance you still has the temporary file on your computer. Do a search for *.TMP and make sure you search includes ALL files and folders. If it's still there, it'll probably start with a ~.

Karma's a bitch.

I don't know, but you should always use the option to have Word autosave every one minute.

I learned that the hard way when my laptop decided it'd be fun to shut itself off every 2 minutes while writing reviews. I know Word 2000 has the recover feature, and it's been invaluable for me. If you don't have that turned on, you really have nobody to blame but yourself.

hxxp://www.twyst.org/~pumpy/ellenfeiss.mov

do a search for *.doc, make sure you have the 'details' on in the file view, and look for the most recent files.

And save more often. Learn from other peoples mistakes. It pained me when my ex-girlfriend had this same thing happen about 4 times during her last 2 years of school. It should never happen to anyone more than once.

It's probably too late to help now, but make sure after you do a search that your folder has the option to show hidden items. This happened to Passacaglia a few weeks ago and that's how I found it.

brilliant!

Yeah, Before declaring yourself screwed I'd look at all of the files in the directory, and look closely at the ones with recent time stamps. You might not be as screwed as you think.


Then again.

My thinking too...search for the temp file. It may have not dropped it.

In Word:

Tools>Options>File Locations Tab

The auto recover spot will show you where Word saves the auto-rolling saves so if there is something to recover, it will be there.

Well I didn't find it...I did the whole thing over again last night with the help of some other students. The paper is crap, but at least it got done.

Poor Ellen Feiss. :(

control-s is your friend.