SPCR

Hi,

My GF lost her presentation yesterday which she spent considerable time doing. She emailed herself the file with Gmail, then opened it directly from gmail. The file was saved to the temporary IE directory and she continued to work on the file, saving it to the temp directory. When she wanted to open it, it was always in her recent powerpoint documents. She tried to open it yesterday to turn it in, and it was missing. I checked the entire computer, including hidden files and OS files, I checked all temporary folders manually, I checked her recent documents folder, but the file has disappeared. There is no record of the file in the trash. Other, older files still exist in the temp folders out for several weeks, but this file is missing. What can I do?

Download a undelete utility (there are a few free ones and some shareware ones that will recover smaller files for free) and search for the file name.

This is a tricky one, as you have to hope that the sector was not overridde.

Did you also check "Documents and Settings\%Username%\Local Settings\Temp"? This is where some programs store temp files when no local space is specified.

Best of luck.

did she delete the "temporary internet files" or something like that? or maybe try opening the file from gmail again? teh file she was using in the temp directory may have gotten overwritten or delete

step number 1: Don't freak out, missing data can almost always be recovered if you are careful and methodical about getting it back

number 2: decide if its worth spending the time getting it back - it might take days to finally figure out how to retrieve it

I use a program called "Active@Undelete" which does a good job of finding delete files of anykind but isn't the easiest to use.

Hello,

I use a good program called "Get Data Back":

http://www.runtime.org/products.htm

You can use it, and if it works you can then pay for it. It can recover files from hard drives that still work, but are no longer recognized by Windows.

http://www.active-undelete.com/

worked for me. I was glad to pay $40 for it!

You can also get a demo and if it doesn't see your files, there's no love lost, just uninstall it.

I always save documents to my documents or my archives,pictures go to my pictures,music files,software installers,new downloads all have places to STAY. If it says "temp" it's not a PERMANENT and secure place. Some programs have their own default places to put stuff--and I NEVER allow that-as I've wasted time hunting for it.

There's a dozen or more apps for finding lost or deleted files. This may be hiding in the Program files under some app or in one of the documents + settings folders. You can set View details and arrange by date modified to bring recent stuff to the top.

Good luck

WinHex is another one you can try, it recovered 20 GB of music for me once. Not recommended for average Joe, it's quite advanced and have got lots of functions. It's not intended for data recovery only, though.

Thx, i tried some undelete programs and failed. I gave up