lost word doc

Where Attachments Opened from Windows Mail or Outlook Express are Stored.
Should you ever forget to do that, you can try recovering the file:  Select Control Panel from the Start menu.
Open Internet Options. If you cannot see Internet Options, try clicking Classic View.
 
Go to the General tab.
Click Settings under Temporary Internet files.
Now click View Files... under Temporary Internet files folder.
Look for the edited copy of the attachment in the Temporary Internet Files folder,
the Content.IE5 sub-folder or
a folder beneath the Content.IE5 folder.

Hello Harry

You have discovered the hard way that opening a word document (or any file capable of being edited and resaved) directly from the attachment field of Outlook Express, does NOT save the changes to the file that is attached.

You see, an email message in Outlook Express is a package comprising several components that are unpacked when opened.  Until then, the attachment is deeply embedded into the actual data that makes up the email. When the email is closed, the file remains in its original state inside the email message, ie. unaffected by any edits made while it was opened for editing.

Assuming that you closed Word and the email after doing your Save, then I am pretty sure that you WILL NOT find any leftover files that will contain any of your edits either.  You could try of course, using the previous suggestion made by krazyjakee, but I am not optimistic because I have examined how this works many times before, and I'm pretty sure you aren't still hanging in there with Word still opened with the attachment file loaded.

You would have stood a chance of recovering the edited file (See "D" below) if you had left the email open and Word open to that document and then recovered the *.doc file from the Temporary Internet Files folder by copying it out BEFORE closing it and the email.

Please take a look at my screenshot of the Temporary Internet Files sub-folder containing the contents of my email message and read the notes about each of the files below.  Note: this is relevant for Windows XP and Word 2003.  I couldn't say for certain about versions of Office prior to 2000 and anything older than XP, but the process is likely to be much the same.

A - Created as any email is opened.  Remains as Temp Internet file until deleted.  Contains no content.

B - Temporary container for Email content, NOT the attachment. Disappears when that email is closed.

C - Created at some point as I opened the Word *.doc attachment.  Same as for A.

D - Word Document extracted from message as Temporary file by SAME FILE NAME as attachment.  Remains there until the EMAIL CONTAINING the attached document attachment is closed. ie. it persists AFTER Word is closed AND it CONTAINS the edits you made before clicking the Save button in Word.  It will disappear when the Email is closed though.

E - Never been too sure about this file, but I BELIEVE that it may just be a temporary file that loads some Word user settings into the document being opened. This file disappears when the Word DOCUMENT is closed.  I don't believe it's relevant to your quest though.

F - Created whenever the first edit is made to the open Word document.  Microsoft Word creates a backup document in case Word crashes and the document needs to be recovered. In normal use when opened from a file in a standard folder, this file is recoverable with edits made up to the last background save.  The same MAY be true if the document was opened as a Temporary Internet File from an Outlook Express attachment, but this file disappears when WORD is closed.

So, the file shown at "D" would have contained your edits, but would have disappeared when you closed the email containing the attachment.

Of course, every file created on a hard drive MAY be recoverable by using a Data Recovery program.  This type of utility only stands a chance of recovering deleted files if you:

1. Stop using the hard drive
and
2. Disconnect the hard drive and temporarily attach to another computer as a slave drive on another computer running such recovery software.

When a file is deleted from the hard drive, it is still actually there, but the areas it occupies are marked as available for new data to be written to.  Using the computer or installing anything on it can overwrite those areas.

Recovering "deleted files" will produce thousands of files.  Some may be intact while others may be old corrupt files.  The importance of those edits you made will dictate whether data recovery is something you need to try.  The process can take a long time and good software does cost money, albeit a reasonable price for my preferred GetDataBack program.

We can give any advice you need if you must get that file recovered.

By the way, if you are using Windows XP, then you may not simply be able to see or open the SUB-folders of your own Temporary Internet Files folder by opening Windows Explorer and navigating through to it.

You will see the contents directly unter that folder, but not usually the sub-folders or their contents unless you launch Windows Explorer directly into the "Content.IE5" folder using the following command (changing your UserName from "Bill" to whatever yours is:

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n, /e,"C:\Documents and Settings\Bill\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5"

Regards
Bill

Hello harry,

You can also look out in document and settings folder of your system under your profile name folder. It happens in my case that the documents which i open are saved to this folder. I don't know how it was enabled but you can look for it.