Outlook missing attachment help

[Sean Delere]

I hope someone can help here as I have tried everything I can think
of!

I sent an XLS file to my collegue who opened the attachment rather
than saving it first. She spent several hours adding data to the file
and kept clicking the save icon to make sure she didn't loose
anything.

The following day she came to open the file again and there was no
sign of it anywhere. After spending most of the day on Google it would
appear that Outlook destroys this file without any warnings even
though it has been saved repeatedly in Excel.

Can anyone confirm this behaviour or better still, can anyone suggest
a method of recovering this file - maybe Excel is more intelligent
than Outlook?

Many thanks in advance for ANY help you can give me,
Sean

 

[Brian Tillman]

I sent an XLS file to my collegue who opened the attachment rather
than saving it first. She spent several hours adding data to the file
and kept clicking the save icon to make sure she didn't loose
anything.

The following day she came to open the file again and there was no
sign of it anywhere. After spending most of the day on Google it would
appear that Outlook destroys this file without any warnings even
though it has been saved repeatedly in Excel.

Outlook did not "destroy" the file.Excel did exactly what she told it to do,
constantly overwriting the temporary file. It's possible that it is still
on her hard drive in a subfolder of the "Temporary Internet Files" folder.

Can anyone confirm this behaviour or better still, can anyone suggest
a method of recovering this file - maybe Excel is more intelligent
than Outlook?

Open a command line prompt window and enter:

cd %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
dir

See if there is a folder in there starting with "OLK" followed by two or
three more digits and/or letters. For example, the folder might be OLK41A.
If you see it, enter this:

cd OLK41A
dir

(Of course, use the folder name you see, not my literal example.) You
should see any termporary files Outlook has created by opening attachments.
For example, I just opened a message with an attachment called "ESS
Manual.pdf
and opened the attachment. Naturally, I see a file "ESS Manual.pdf" in the
OLK41A folder. You should then be able to copy that temporary file. For
example, I entered:

copy "ESS Manual.pdf" "%USERPROFILE%\My Documents"

and voila! I now have a copy of that attachment in my "My Documents"
folder.

 

[Sean Delere]

Outlook did not "destroy" the file.Excel did exactly what she told it to
do,

constantly overwriting the temporary file. It's possible that it is still
on her hard drive in a subfolder of the "Temporary Internet Files" folder.

I take your point about Outlook not "destroying" the file but you would
expect some kind of warning, especially from Excel as it lets you save this
disappearing file.

Open a command line prompt window and enter:

cd %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
dir

See if there is a folder in there starting with "OLK" followed by two or
three more digits and/or letters. For example, the folder might be OLK41A.
If you see it, enter this:

cd OLK41A
dir

(Of course, use the folder name you see, not my literal example.) You
should see any termporary files Outlook has created by opening attachments.
For example, I just opened a message with an attachment called "ESS
Manual.pdf
and opened the attachment. Naturally, I see a file "ESS Manual.pdf" in the
OLK41A folder. You should then be able to copy that temporary file. For
example, I entered:

copy "ESS Manual.pdf" "%USERPROFILE%\My Documents"

and voila! I now have a copy of that attachment in my "My Documents"
folder.

I tried this on my machine and it worked but didn't work on my laptop.

I am hoping (fingers crossed, everything crossed in fact) that it will work
on her laptop too.

If it does work I owe you a drink, if not then I will thank you all the same
and still buy you a drink!

 

[Brian Tillman]

I take your point about Outlook not "destroying" the file but you
would expect some kind of warning, especially from Excel as it lets
you save this disappearing file.

Why? Excel has no idea the file that it has opened is in a temporary file
cache, nor does it (or should it) care.

I tried this on my machine and it worked but didn't work on my laptop.

I am hoping (fingers crossed, everything crossed in fact) that it
will work on her laptop too.

Perhaps conditions on your laptop did not match your desktop, but it's not
because of the dekstop/laptop distinction. While some parts of Windows
behave differently when on a laptop vs. when on a desktop, Office doesn't

If it does work I owe you a drink, if not then I will thank you all
the same and still buy you a drink!

You have my permission to drink it for me. ;-)