Retrieve an attachment

Question

I'm hoping someone can help me. I received an email from someone with two excel workbook attachments. I had the attachments opened and minimized it. Two days later I tried to save them to my computer before exiting them and the spreadsheets changed. I believe they were edited. I went back to the original email to download and pull up the spreadsheets and it pulls up the edited version and not the original version. I tried retrieving the original version from my downloads and it only shows the edited version. Is there a way to retrieve the original excel workbook spreadsheets and not the edited version?

Answer 1

Even if you open a document or a file from the email and edit it and then save it then you would lose the original document and you would get a new edited document as a product.

If you are logged into your account on some other device like a smartphone. Then I suggest you try downloading the email attachment from there if there, the document is unedited.

OR

Ask the sender to resend you the email.

Note: Once you save the edits to a document you lose the original content of that document.

Answer 2

Hi Rachel,

Feel free to post back if you need further assistance.

Best Regards,

Waqas Muhammad

Answer 3

Hi Rachel,

As per your description, when you received a Excel workbook link via email attachment and when you open workbook link after days you will later see latest edited updates content in Excel workbook.

It seems Excel file save on cloud location e.g. OneDrive for business and SharePoint online document library and when you open Excel workbook online it will updates content because Excel workbook save on online location.

To retrieve a original Excel workbook you need to go online location place where Excel file save, if you don’t have access online location please asked to someone go to Excel file location.  Please check the version history, or  SharePoint online version historyof that workbook, see if the content could be retrieve.

Your understanding and time will be highly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Waqas Muhammad

Answer 4

I'm trying to retrieve the original attachment, not the edited attachment.  Is there a way to retrieve the original attachment? When I go to the original email and open the attachments, they are edited and not what I opened originally.

Answer 5

If you open a doc attachment edit it, even if you save & close any edit will be lost, whilst that doc is attached to the email msg.

To save any edits you have to use Save As to save the doc to the PC location, the original attachment will not save any edits.