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MS Office Word 2003 - Document failed to recover changes

I came into work today to discover the my workstation had been rebooted (most likely a forced reboot to apply security updates, but with no real warning the day before). This always vexes me as it closes everything I had been working on, including updating a document in MS Office Word 2003. Of course this has happened before so I always save every few minutes, generating TMP files, until I eventually close the document.

This time however, when I opened the document I expected to see a "recovery" request, but there was none. The ~name.doc version of the original file and several TMP files are occupying teh documents directory. Is there any way for me to recover my changes...?

Answer
Answer
The ~$trust Guide.doc file is the "owner" or "lock" file that prevents another user from editing the document while you have it open. If any of the .tmp files being with ~$wrl, you may find some usable material there. But your statement that "my workstation would have remained untouched (i.e. no reboot) for at least 10 or so minutes" suggests to me that you are still relying on the AutoRecovery backups rather than manual saves. The AutoRecovery backup is (especially in Word 2003) not a substitute for manual saves. See http://word.mvps.org/faqs/general/AutomaticSave.htm or (for later versions) http://wordfaqs.mvps.org/SaveOptions.htm.
Microsoft MVP (Word) since 1999
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://ssbarnhill.com
http://wordfaqs.ssbarnhill.com
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Last updated October 5, 2021 Views 677 Applies to: