Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

recover modified word document

Aug 6, 2005 9:03AM PDT

I accidentally wrote over a file and saved it. I don't have any backups to my knowledge. is there a whey to recover the file prior to the modification? where would the backupp file be (outside of the folder where the file was originaly saved)?

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
I fear that,
Aug 7, 2005 4:02AM PDT

unless you purposefully made a backup prior to overwriting it, then there is nothing to be done.

There may be a glimmer of hope.

You haven't said which application, (program), you are using. If it is Microsoft Office's Word, then it ''may'' be that Word has been set to create a backup file.

In Word, goto Tools > Options and click the Save tab.

If the option ''Always create backup copy'' is ticked, then when you saved the document overwriting the original, Word will have created a backup of the original document with the extension .WBK in the same folder as the original document.

So, if that is the case, look in the folder where you have saved this new file and look for a file *******.wbk where ******* is the original name.

Good luck.

Mark

- Collapse -
well, I did lose my paper :(
Aug 10, 2005 8:58AM PDT

but thx 4 the advice! the box was not checked, so I know now it won't happen again...