Cannot find Saved document

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Ritter197

I have a friend who is legally blind and I try to help him often with windows XP.
He received yesterday in Windows Live Mail with windows xp a document from his previous company with an attachment "All_articles_finalreview.doc".
He made many changes to it which took him over 4 hours. Then when he was finished he was asked to Save it and he said yes.

I was at his house to-day trying to find this changed document but could not find it anywhere. But is just HAS to be there somewhere.

I went to Search and put in the search "All-" also later just "All" and it found 964 documents which somewhere in the title had "all" like in install, ball, mall, etc. but never the document he saved.

I went to the C drive and went to explore and again went to search, again could not find his document.

Then I did a test. I opened the attachment and just added on top of the opened document a line with capital W's and then saved it. Again, I could not find this changed document.

I even went to Search and searched for .doc and could not find his modified or mine.

How can that be? It must be somewhere. I even said in search to search for hidden files, and still it did not find his or my modified document. I have never experienced something like that and if any of you have good ideas, let me know
 
The updated document was saved to the IE Temporary Internet Files (TIF).
That's where WLM saves a temporary copy of attachments when you open
them from within WLM.

You cannot update an attachment within a WLM message. You need to save
the attachment and then open it, or if you open it from within WLM, you
need to use the File, Save As option in the application to save the
updates to some place other than the TIF.

There is chance that the updated attachment is still in the TIF.

Any attachments, if they are still there, will Not show if you look at
the TIF from IE or the Windows Explorer normally. You will be able to
see them if you use Start, Run and enter the command:

WinXP
%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\

Vista/Win7
%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet
Files\Content.IE5\

This assumes that you have not moved the TIF. You can check the actual
location by looking in IE at Tools, Internet Options, General, Temporary
Internet Files, Settings. The \Content.IE5\ at the end is import or
else you won't be able to see all the files. You should see 4 folders
with names such as A1B2C3D4. You'll need to look in each folder for the
missing files. The Search function won't work. Also, your Windows
Folder Options must be set Not to Hide Protected Operating System Files
or else you won't see the folders and files.

An alternate access method is to open a Command Prompt window and use
"DOS" commands to locate and copy the file elsewhere. If you start at
the folder above the TIF and use the command
DIR /A /S *.DOC
(or whatever the file extension is) it will indicate if the file is
still there. You'll need to use a COPY command to copy the file
elsewhere. This will be cumbersome because of the peculiar folder
names.
 
Thanks a lot. I wish I could have this advice while I was at his house,
which is in another city in MD.
But I will print it out and try it when I am there again.

Thanks a lot

Karl
 
Unfortunately, the longer you wait, the more chance that Windows will have
purged the TIF or overwritten the file.

Gary VanderMolen, Microsoft MVP (Mail)


"Ritter197" wrote in message
Thanks a lot. I wish I could have this advice while I was at his house,
which is in another city in MD.
But I will print it out and try it when I am there again.

Thanks a lot

Karl
 
There is chance that the updated attachment is still in the TIF.


Michael,

You didn't mention about having to close the containing E-mail before saving
the changed attachment. Otherwise, although the attachment is saved into
the TIF, it is then deleted when the message window is closed. That is the
case in OE at least. Use ProcMon to see it happen most clearly. I must
admit I haven't checked whether WLMail does the same thing (especially the
new beta <w>).


Robert
---
 
Well, let me explain something what he did.
He got this e-mail with an attachment.
He opened the attachment in MS WORD 2003.
He started to make revisions.
He said after 4 hours SAVE.
He then got out of that document.
He closed windows mail.
When I was at his house (50 miles RT unfortunately) that original document
was there as the original attachment and I opened it fine with his MS WORD
2003.
His changes were not in it, which is understandable, since this was the
Original document.
Now I tried something by typing on the first line of that open word document
a whole line of capital W's and then said Save. But it never showed where it
saved it.
I could never find this changed document in his document folder, under
Search with the title name, under Search with .doc.
So that is the mystery. Where is his or for that matter my document?
OE, Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail (IMHO) has nothing to do with it,
since we had the document open in WORD 2003.
 
He got this e-mail with an attachment.
He opened the attachment in MS WORD 2003.
Click to expand...


What's missing in your descriptions is when the containing E-mail was
closed. If it was closed after opening the attachment but before saving it
then I think there would be a chance of finding it in the TIF.

He started to make revisions.
He said after 4 hours SAVE.
He then got out of that document.
Click to expand...


Typically what users would do at this point is close the containing E-mail.
That's when the attachment would be deleted, thus deleting the altered
document. If that happened when Word still had its copy open then it
could be saved anywhere, including recreating the "deleted" temporary file.


FYI

Robert
---
 
After I tried to replicate this, I realized that what you say happened is
that you and your friend both edited a doc opened directly from WM, then
simply clicked "SAVE" after editing. You got what you wanted, which was that
you "SAVED" the doc to the temporary location. Upon closing either the email
__or WM__, the temp file was deleted. You can watch it happen by looking for
the temp doc after opening Word. Keep that folder open. Edit said doc. Save
said doc. Close WM, doc goes away. Try again, only this time close email but
leave WM open. Edit, save, close Word and WM. Temp doc goes.

I had to actually try this, because even a noob like me knows to make sure
to "SAVE AS..." a doc I've edited to a location of MY choosing, and I can
not imagine why someone would not put a doc exactly where they want it to be
saved. After replicating the steps, I also realized that I have been using
"SAVE AS..." since Outlook on Win95, because I'd had exactly the same
disappearing doc issue when I tried to use save. This is nothing new to
email. If I am remembering correctly, Eudora and some generic text editor I
was using back then did the same thing in the early days of Win 3.

I tried the same experiment, but this time used "SAVE AS..." Closed all, and
there it was. I repeated the experiment, putting the doc in a number of
locations. Always reliably there after closing everything.

Take this as a learning experience - Use SAVE AS when opening and editing a
doc directly from one's email.





"Ritter197" wrote in message
Well, let me explain something what he did.
He got this e-mail with an attachment.
He opened the attachment in MS WORD 2003.
He started to make revisions.
He said after 4 hours SAVE.
He then got out of that document.
He closed windows mail.
When I was at his house (50 miles RT unfortunately) that original document
was there as the original attachment and I opened it fine with his MS WORD
2003.
His changes were not in it, which is understandable, since this was the
Original document.
Now I tried something by typing on the first line of that open word document
a whole line of capital W's and then said Save. But it never showed where it
saved it.
I could never find this changed document in his document folder, under
Search with the title name, under Search with .doc.
So that is the mystery. Where is his or for that matter my document?
OE, Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail (IMHO) has nothing to do with it,
since we had the document open in WORD 2003.
 
It was my experience with OE that when you close a message, it attempts
to delete the attachment from the TIF.

But with WLM, my experience has been that it tends leave attachments in
the TIF. I haven't checked this with the beta. And it's been a while
since I checked so I'm not sure if that still applies to newer builds.
But it's worth looking for the attachment.
 
with WLM, my experience has been that it tends leave attachments in the
TIF.
Click to expand...


Great. Then the procedure that I would use to find a changed .doc file
would be:

1. Open the TIF from an IE window (because I would probably have one
open--otherwise open Internet Options).
E.g. in IE press Alt-T,O,Alt-S,V
2. Capture the path from that Explorer window. E.g. press Alt-d,Ctrl-c
3. Switch to a cmd window and build a cd /d command with the captured
path. E.g.
3.1 type cd /d and at least one more space
3.2 right-click, Paste
3.3 press Enter
4. Search the TIF (including LOW TIF) for *.doc. E.g. enter the
command:
dir/a/b/s *.doc

That gives a full path which can then be captured from the cmd window and
pasted into an Open dialog etc.


FYI

Robert
---
 
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