Hey guys.. slight problem with excel here. I was keeping a spreadsheet with some fairly important details on and quite stupidly hadn't made a backup file. Anyway today I go to open the file through excel and find it's gone! A search of the computer can only find shortcuts to it which don't work and it isn't in the recycle bin Anyone know what could have happened/how to get it back? Thanks
I assume you've done a search on your entire hard drive for the file name? Failing that, does the document appear in the "recent files" section of the file menu in Excel?
I clicked on COMPUTER , right clicked C: and then searched... nothing except 2 shortcuts or something which gave an error message saying the file may have been moved or deleted. It does appear in the recent files list in excel, but clicking it again brings up the "could not find, may have been moved or deleted" error message :/
I don't think it's anywhere else - though I'm not the best with computers tbh! I've always opened it either through the recent files or document folder.
It's possible that the file has been moved or renamed in a weird way, but all in all this doesn't sound great. Not sure where I'd go next to be honest, if the search function and recent files don't find your file and you're not seeing it in any of the locations you normally keep files, you might just have to start again... Hopefully someone else will be able to offer something more though.
You may be able to do a search for files with particular words typed in them, rather than in the title. This way, if you've changed the filename by mistake you could still find it. Think of a word in the file that's unusual and search for that. You could also search for *.xls on your pc which will bring up every excel file. Go through these, again to see if you've renamed it by mistake. Have you used any memory sticks, or other plug in storage stuff? Check these to see if you moved it there by mistake. If you can find one of the shortcuts that don't work and check the properties it should give you the target location for the shortcut which would also indicate where you might have moved it to. Hope that makes some sense Mitch
Thanks, both of you Mitch... do I search for content in the same way that I would search for a filename? Also, searching for *.xls brings up NOTHING so I think I'm doing something wrong here Clicking properties on the two non-working shortcuts points to the documents folder, where the file ISN'T :/ This is weird
A bit of Chopin and the realisation you deleted the file. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyFyAqLtHq8"]YouTube - Classical - Chopin - Funeral March[/ame]
I'd sit here all night listening to that and crying, IF I'd deleted it. However I wouldn't know how to delete something without first sending it to the recycle bin :/
You can delete it without sending it to the recycle bin by holding shift + del. If you have deleted it you can still get it back, as files are not actually deleted of the hard drive, when you hit delete, those sectors of the hard drive are just marked as free and will be written over. If this is the case it is easy to fix. Download a program called Recuva, from Piriform. Run a search on the hdd that you had the file on. It will list all files that exist within 'free' sectors of the hdd. If it is recent these sectors shouldn't have been over written, and you will simply be able to mark the sector as used, and the file will appear again. If that doesn't work and the spreadsheet has been renamed, searching for '*.xls' should find it. It should find any spreadsheet on the hard drive. Make sure you are searching by filename (not words in the files), and that you have not added any other filters.
You might have renamed it without any file extension (my missus is ALWAYS doing this with photos...removing the .jpg from the end). In that case your PC won't know what it is and so won't be able to open it or find it if you search for *.xls. Have a look for odd named files with no file extension. Try adding .xls on the end and see if excel can open it. You could have single clicked on it...then clicked again (which will access the name of the file) and then pressed some keys and thus re-named it by mistake.
