I lost an important Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that took all day to complete. I press save and can't find it

Question

The project is due and I don't have the time to look through tons of files to redo the project. Can someone show me how to fix this? I did a search on my computer, looked through recent documents and its gone. But how??? I know I did not save it to any file because I was planning to just print it. I thought as long as I pressed save it would go somewhere on my computer and be safe. Please HELP!! My job could be on the line so any help you can give I will take it.

Answer 1

Wendi C,
Shame on you :-)
It's great that you know you pressed save. Normally it will save it to where it got it from. It updates whatever spreadsheet you started with leaving it right where it got it. If you started with a new excel spreadsheet by opening your excel program and just started entering data the save (rather than save as) it still asks you if you want to put it in your my documents folder and call it Book 1 by default. If you got the spreadsheet as an email attachment, some email clients saves it to the temp folder in your email program folder. Run a search for doc.s and files called "temp". Open each one and look for your excel file.
Try looking in your temp Folder.
You can always run an advanced search for the doc.s you modified on a certain date, or within the last week.
Good luck.
When the techs that work for me try to tell me they worked on something all day but then the computer blah, blah, blah, and the file is lost. I tell them that's where the pay check for that day went too :-)

Answer 2

Go into explore (left click your start button in the left bottom corner of your screen). Click on explore. Then click once on Local Disk (C:). Make sure you are scanning the whole of the C drive not just an individual folder. Then click search in the taskbar. This brings up a menu asking your what you want to search for. Click on the the second one down (which says Documents wordprocessing, spreadsheets etc). You then get a screen which you can type in the name (or part of it) if you can remember what you saved it as. If you don't remember the name or you might have remembered it incorrectly then just click on the time scale that you created it in (i.e all documents from last week or month etc). Then click search. That will bring up a list of all the documents. Then you just double click to open it. You've probably saved it in the wrong folder, so just save it again as a save as and check the folder you are saving it in. Hope that helps.

Answer 3

If you don't remember the file name, you can search for any Excel spreadsheet by typing an asterisk (*) instead of the file name. The extension depends on what version of Excel you're using. Save a dummy sheet with a name like "test" in a location you will know (like in My Documents, for example) and find out what extension it gives the file. It may be .xml, or .wkb or perhaps something else. Whatever it is, open your Windows search window from the start button, and search for all files and folders using the name *.xml or *.wkb or whatever extension your version is using. If you saved the file, this should find it. Good Luck!

Answer 4

I guess you mean that you did a search for all .xls files on your computer with *.xls and did a sort by date. Check out your recycle bin the same way - sort by date. Maybe just doing a search where it is offered in the start menu in the bottom left corner of your screen could help.

I can imagine that you now know to always name your files, even if you think that you'll never need them again.

Answer 5

If you remember what you saved it as go to Start and hit Search... All Files and Folders... search away! Also if you don't know what it would have saved as go into excel and click "save as"... the folder that comes up should be the folder it saved your last work in so it would be there... oh yeah that way is way more simple

Answer 6

that's interesting to end and imagine about the surely length of a worksheet. Do the mathematics (256 * sixty 5,536), and we can see that a worksheet has 16,777,216 cells. undergo in ideas, it really is in only one worksheet. A unmarried workbook can carry better than one worksheet. If we are using the classic VGA video mode with the default row heights and column widths, we can see 9 columns and 18 rows (or 162 cells) at a time. If we entered a unmarried digit into each and each and every cellular at a particularly speedy clip of one cellular in step with 2d, it ought to take us about 194 days, non-end, to proper off a worksheet (longer, if our ruin for espresso). To print the outcome of our efforts ought to require better than 36,000 sheets of paper - a stack about six ft tall Oh... and if you're wondering: No, it isn't a threat to enhance the scale of a worksheet. The form of rows and columns is fastened. inspite of what might want to volume to 1000's of requests to Microsoft, we only can't coax Excel into exhibiting better rows or column.

Answer 7

Create a blank spreadsheet and save it. See where the save dialog puts it. You may even see the other file in the save window.

Answer 8

Open a new workbook.

Click: File/Save As

The Save-As dialog box will pop up
Look at that folder/directory. Your file should be there named Book1.xls.

.

Answer 9

Search for "wordbook", *.xls and *.rec - any files that come up as wordbook1.xls for example, or .rec files you find you should try to open in Excel.