I've tried to recover data from the hard drive?

Question

I've used several programs that deal with recovering lost files and the Excel file that I am looking for is indicated as "overwritten". Does that mean it's irretrievable?

Answer 1

Yup, it's toast. The clusters on the hard drive where that Excel document sat have new data in it now. Sorry to hear about it.

Answer 2

That one is gone dude. You might get lucky though and there is a second copy on your drive somewhere. Use Search and specify your file as *filename*.xls. where filename is the name of your overwritten file. A copy might be found.