lost data

[Steven Swartzendruber]

While trying to open a spreadsheet on iDisk Excel froze making me
force quit the program. When I later tried to open that same
spreadsheet to my horror I saw every byte of data had been zapped. I
never got the spreadsheet open when the program froze, I certainly
didn't erase my own data or save anything (I was stuck looking at the
wrist watch). Is there ANY WAY to get excel to revert to the saved
version or re-capture my data? This was a 3 page workbook...

 

[J.E. McGimpsey]

While trying to open a spreadsheet on iDisk Excel froze making me
force quit the program. When I later tried to open that same
spreadsheet to my horror I saw every byte of data had been zapped. I
never got the spreadsheet open when the program froze, I certainly
didn't erase my own data or save anything (I was stuck looking at the
wrist watch). Is there ANY WAY to get excel to revert to the saved
version or re-capture my data? This was a 3 page workbook...

Are you sure your data was there when you tried to open the file the
first time? If you never got it open when XL crashed, it sounds like
the corruption probably caused the crash in the first place. But
then you were able to open it later, but the data was gone...?

It's probably gone for good unless you have a backup. Did the file
size change?

As a (very) long shot, XL2002 for Windows has some advanced methods
of recovering corrupted workbooks. If you know someone with Office
XP, you might give that a try.

FWIW - You can set up a template to make all your new workbooks
automatically save a backup:

1) Create a clean workbook with the number of sheets you want. Add
any formatting or data you want to include in each new workbook.

2) Choose File/Save As and click Options. Check the Always create
backup checkbox and click OK.

3) Select "Excel Template" from the file type dropdown and navigate
to the Microsoft Office N:Office:Startup:Excel: folder (where N is
98, 2001 or X).

4) Save the file with the file name "Workbook" (no quotes, and no
extension).

From then on, all new workbooks created with File/New will use that
template. You can also create a one-sheet template named "Sheet"
that will be used when you insert a worksheet into an existing
workbook.