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Saved modifications gone?

Anonymous
2017-05-01T15:28:38+00:00

Hi all, 

I was working on a very important document all of last week. I worked on it yesterday evening, but when I returned to it today, I lost all of the progress of last weekend (Saturday and Sunday). The file I have on my laptop says it was last modified on Thursday, even though I worked on it yesterday and it still had the modifications I made to it on Saturday.

My question is: where could my file be? I have autosave turned on automatically and I am really really sure I saved the file correctly yesterday. What I did already: 

  • Searched my laptop and my onedrive for .doc/.docx files to see if it wasn't magically there
  • Searched my laptop and my onedrive for any files containing a tilde in the file name (~)
  • Searched that hidden 'AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Word' folder
  • Force quit Word to give me a list of recovered files
  • Checked the 'File history' on my onedrive, but since it only got the Friday version and not the Sunday version, that didn't help either.
  • Tried to recover the overwritten file using 'Recuva' (by Piriform)

The work I did was nowhere to be found... The file is there, but with 27th of April as modification date, even though I worked on it three days afterwards as well. 

In case there's no way to get my file back - which would be very very unfortunate - is there anything I could do to prevent this kind of stuff happening in the future?

Thanks!

-- 

Edit: the only thing that I can think of that happened is the following:

My Friday file was on the Onedrive; my Sunday file was on my laptop; today they synchronized and my Friday file replaced the Sunday file on my laptop. Why would Onedrive do that if the Sunday file is newer than the Friday file? Is there any way to undo this?

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-05-02T18:35:17+00:00

    Hi,

    Apologies if you already tried this, but did you check the "Version History" on onedrive.com? Here's how to get there:

    1. Go to onedrive.com
    2. Navigate to the file you want to restore
    3. Right-click -> "Version history"

    It's similar to File History in Windows, but these are totally cloud-based versions that get created on upload.

    For the future, there are some suggestions in this thread about manually managing what goes to the cloud and what stays local, or even trying to directly open the cloud version. I say do what works best for you and makes you confident that your files are safe.

    Personally, I save my documents into the OneDrive folder on my computer, I keep the "Use Office 2016 to sync ..." option in OneDrive checked, and I don't do much else. I trust that OneDrive's version history will let me go back if there's an issue or if I accidentally overwrite something, and autosave usually beats me to hitting Ctrl-S. If I'm extra worried that a file might not be saving properly, I'll check the web version (on onedrive.com) to see if my latest changes are there.

    7 people found this answer helpful.
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  2. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 322.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2017-05-01T23:28:15+00:00

    I NEVER save directly to OneDrive or to the OneDrive folder on my computers.  I ALWAYS save to normal folder on the local drive.  If I want something on OneDrive I upload it and if I want to access it from another device, I download it to that device.  That way, I only have myself to blame if things go wrong and I always have the copy on the local drive to go back to.

    2 people found this answer helpful.
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  3. Anonymous
    2017-05-02T07:41:48+00:00

    Thanks Doug! 

    I think I might gonna do that as well, although it defeats the purpose of my OneDrive a bit.. I use it to work on my papers and documents when I'm traveling and can't use my office desktop. The good thing about OneDrive is/was that I can't forget to transfer files, because everything is immediately on it. 

    But well, I don't wanna risk losing all of my work again, so I'll just move the files I'll be needing to OneDrive and save them on my local drive when I edited them...

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-05-01T21:52:14+00:00

    Hi Desiree, 

    Thanks for your kind and fast reply! 

    Do you mean I do not save the file in the OneDrive folder on my laptop, but I have to save it directly in the cloud?

    Does this work when I don't have WiFi? (Because that's when I use OneDrive the most... When I'm traveling by train..)

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  5. Anonymous
    2017-05-01T20:18:46+00:00

    Hi,

    To avoid this issue from happening again, we suggest that you perform the following:

    • Make sure to properly save the document before you close it.
    • Double check the document if you have saved it successfully.
    • Save the document directly to OneDrive, so that when you synchronize your OneDrive, it will replace the old version of documents saved on your computer.

    Hope this information helps you. In case you need further assistance, kindly reply to us.

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