URGENT! can I retrive saved over file?

[PCFetish]

I was working on my excel stuff, accidently copy and pasted over a cell with important info. and saved it.
Is there way to get that back?

 

[igowerf]

Can't just undo?

 

[imported_LoKe]

Control + Z?

 

[PCFetish]

Originally posted by: PCFetish
saved it.

If I knew I pasted it over, I wouldn't have saved it would I?
no other way? maybe using some program to comb over the hard drive maybe... man i'm screwed

 

[xtknight]

Not possible for most feasible purposes (not saying not possible at all). It won't be easy. Unless you have a comprehensive understanding of x86 assembly and know exactly which bytes of the xls file were affected. And that data hasn't been replaced by new files on the hard disk. Either that or using a drive saver program/service.

What kind of data was it? Not to sound harsh but I find it hard to believe it's not replaceable somehow...? If you didn't reboot your PC you could also try dumping your memory to get the part of it that didn't get replaced. You could also try this program called Restoration (freeware). Not sure if you can get it to get 'part' of a file. There are services like Drive Savers (www.drivesavers.com). Not sure what they could do for you as they mostly recover drives from head crashes. No idea, but if it's that serious your time would be well spent investigating them. I'm thinking you overwrote it with blank cells so chance of recovery is almost nil, unfortunately. Most of these programs and services recover files, not data from within files. The data MAY be lurking on your hard disk but the complexity of finding it and retrieving it isn't even funny. Anyway,

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html
http://www.drivesavers.com/index.html

But again I'm in serious doubt these programs and services can retrieve lost (let alone overwritten) data from within files. Only the files themselves. The way they work if they look for data that don't exist in the master boot record (partition table and file table). Somehow they get the filename of the data and present it to you...I'm unsure of the whole process. What I do know is, one time I tried recovering a file (an exe) and it didn't run correctly, so it must have been stray data from somewhere else on the hard drive. There's a reason there's government policies for erasing data throughly. That reason being that data can be restored even though it's been replaced. Next time you have serious data just make sure you make a backup copy or 500 (on different media besides your hard disk). Good luck...

Also there COULD be extra files where the .xls file resided like backup files...depending on your options in Microsoft Excel. Like if the workbook was named book1.xls, there could be a book1.[something else] file(s). If there is, make a copy of the file(s) so they don't get overwritten. You might be able to use them to get the data some how.

 

[xtknight]

I edited my post a million times just to let you know...should be done now. Last Edited: 07/07/2005 at 03:54 AM by xtknight

 

[PCFetish]

when you open a document, doesn' it creat a temp file on the same directory?
and it gest deleted when you close it?
this happens in word but not in excel...
only if I could find even a day old version of this file, Id be saved.
we back up our files at the end of the day but ofcourse, file that's in back up is the new saved file with empty cell... only if I noticed it before backup, i could've retrived yesterdays file and fill in missing data...
computer is always on
thanks for your help

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: PCFetish
when you open a document, doesn' it creat a temp file on the same directory?
and it gest deleted when you close it?
this happens in word but not in excel...
only if I could find even a day old version of this file, Id be saved.
we back up our files at the end of the day but ofcourse, file that's in back up is the new saved file with empty cell... only if I noticed it before backup, i could've retrived yesterdays file and fill in missing data...

thanks for your help

I'm guessing you missed my last edit of my earlier post...sorry for editing 5 million times. I may be able to help you "tomorrow"...just too tired now. So you only have a backup of the file 1 save back? What's more justified? Trying to get this data back by other means or spending $1000 for drivesavers to get it (if they even can)? Uhh...if there's some way you can stop it from backing up any more for now...well...each time it backs up you lose chances of saving the old remnants. You could try to find it directly from the backup drive also.

 

[PCFetish]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Also there COULD be extra files where the .xls file resided like backup files...depending on your options in Microsoft Excel. Like if the workbook was named book1.xls, there could be a book1.[something else] file(s). If there is, make a copy of the file(s) so they don't get overwritten. You might be able to use them to get the data some how.

yes, that's what i'm hoping to find...
i'm not at that computer now so i can't do anything right now...

 

[xtknight]

OK...uhh some data recovery programs can dump data from the hard disk in raw. One of them is called EasyRecovery (if I can remember). You can look it up just to make sure. Anyway, I dumped an Excel file I had into AnalogX TextScan and I can see there is plain text inside it so you can identify cells. As you scroll through the data dump of the whole hard disk (it'll take a while), you should see text you can recognize, like the text of your missing cells, if you're lucky. You can try this on the backup drive and on your local drive. I'm not sure how you're going to go about doing this but it's possible...talk to you tomorrow (as in 8 hours or so from now).