Re: Duh. Closed a file without saving.

On 7/18/06 6:22 PM, in article
1153261353.707867.222490@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Eric Colvin"
<mac@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks, Bob.

I was afraid that that would be the answer.

Here, however, was my reasoning. I had had that "untitled.xlm" file
open and continually changing for the best part of four hours.
Hypothetically, if Excel had "unexpectedly quit" on me (as Excel is
wont to do from time to time on a Macintosh) at any time BEFORE I
closed it, then it would very probably have been optioned for recovery
the next time I booted Excel. Is this not usually the case?

To do this, Excel must surely have been saving regular copies of such
things as my macros and the contents of the open spreadsheets to disk -
even before I decided to close the workbook.

It seems logical then that, had I an understanding of WHERE such
"temporary" files were written, I ought to be able to retrieve them. I
also appreciate that, in practice, there may be all sorts of barriers
to my reading the files once I found them. It's also feasible that,
once the file has been closed, Microsoft marks the disk sectors that
contain the temp files as disposable (and then that OSX - which makes a
point of defragging as it goes - writes over the same sectors). But,
for an untitled file to be recoverable, temporary files must, at some
time, exist. Nicht War?

Speaking theoretically, then the temporary files are created in the same
directory where the original file was opened. For new unsaved workbooks, I
believe the temp files are in the ~\documents folder. However, as far as I
understand it, Excel's temporary files are only written when a file is
saved. You need to have the auto recover option selected in Excel's
preferences. The temporary files are fleeting, in that when a file is saved,
it is copied to the temporary file, then the temporary file is copied "on
top of" the original file and then the temporary file is deleted. All that
happens during an autosave also. So while it may be possible to use a disk
utility to locate the file, unless it was done immediately after you
realized the error you probably would not be able to grab a complete file.

--
Bob Greenblatt [MVP], Macintosh
bobgreenblattATmsnDOTcom

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