AAARRRGGG, Wife just overwrote an important Excel file

[CPA]

Any way to get it back? Will it by chance be in a temp folder?


Note: I am at work and trying to walk her through recovery on the phone.

 

[Sam25]

I doubt whether overwritten Excel files can be recovered, don't think it's possible.

 

[mechBgon]

If it happens to be a Vista Business/Ultimate/Enterprise system, right-click the file and choose "Restore previous versions."

 

[CPA]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
If it happens to be a Vista Business/Ultimate/Enterprise system, right-click the file and choose "Restore previous versions."

nope, XP Pro 🙁

 

[C1]

FIRST DO NOT MESS WITH WRITING ANY MORE TO THE AFFECTED PARTITION !!!!!! KEEP YOUR WIFE OFF THE MACHINE.

There seems to be disagreement as to how NTFS handles file overwrites. First, inspect to see if you have a previous (ie, older) version of the file saved (partial recovery).

One school insists that: "When you open a new doc, type some text, and then choose "Save As..." and specify "foo.doc" (where foo.doc exists already), Windows does NOT seek out "foo.doc" and open it's filestream and overwrite those blocks. Instead, it simply performs a "file delete" on foo.doc, opens a new filestream for the new "foo.doc" and saves the data. "

It would not hurt to visit: http://www.raymond.cc/blog/arc...ata-recovery-software/
and download some undelete software & inspect the partition to see if the overwritten file (in the pre-over written state) is actually there.

PS: The other school insists that the "saves" overwrite the information in the original file to save space, but if the latest save is smaller, then the portion that wasnt overwritten supposedly can be recovered. IMO this would be a mess. You would need something like Norton's Recovery Manager (NDRM) to look directly at the information on the disk. (NDRM has facility to look at the info formatted as either HEX, ASCII or OCTAL.)

 

[Muse]

I used Freeundelete to recover on XP Pro about a year ago with complete success. These were files erased by a batch file. I always wipe my files, never sending them to the Recovery Bin. Thus (except in the instance using the batch file mentioned) I press Shift+Delete, which saves me the trouble of having to empty out my Recovery Bin periodically. I am not apt to make a mistake when deleting files... it's a habit.