Why do the changes I've made to a document that was emailed to me disappear?

Thanks Leo, it is all clear to me now. :)

Hi Leo,

Thanks for your thorough explanation. I just had a row with our IT guys over this issue. Your email explains in a lot more detail why the changed attachment doesn't get saved, but I was wondering if there is anything that can be done in the meantime. Is there any little programme that can be run to disable the "save" option on excel attachments so that you are forced to use "save as" or can you some how set Outlook up so that it auto saves documents into a designated non-temporary folder. It drives me nuts that everyone passively explains why the problem exists and no one knows of a way to fix it... everyone i know in every company i've worked in has lost large ammounts of data in this way, more than once. It's just so counter-intuitive the way it works now.

Yes, I understand it. But where the document is temporarily stored? When I open the file agian it has the (1) attached at end. If I open it third time it has (2) attached. It means the document exists somewhere, but where? I made changes, saved, closed, returned to Outlook, pressed Reply, the message close without asking a thing, and I discovered I have not given an option to save the document at any point. Word recent documents does not list it, Search does not discover any document with similar name on whole drive C:. And Outlook Aplication data folder also does not contain any usable file.

Just another ******* example of how **** and ill- thought through word and outlook is. I have just lost all my edits of a whole ****** afternoon due to this problem.

**** *** Microsoft.

It would be helpful if you gave suggestions on how to search the temporary files.

browse to:
C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\

Search the 'temporary internet files' folder for the extention of your file.
EG: you have been working on a powerpoint file: search for: *.ppt

It's easy to go into this trap if you edit the attachement in the reading pane (without opening the message). This way Outlook won't notice the changes in the attachement and you lost them. Worst is if the attachement is another e-mail message. I could not find the corresponding temporary file, or it was blocked by Outlook and deleted when I exited Outlook.

I had the same problem with a word attachment
this was what I did
FROM DOS
1)cd C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\
2)dir /A /S *.doc
3)copy "filename.doc" c:
4)enjoy!!!

Francesco, you are a lifesaver! This worked - except that I had to change the directory to Temporary Internet Files and then the Outlook folder (OLKxx). I never knew you could recover modified Outlook attachments. Strange that they don't show up in Windows Explorer but appear in the DOS file list. Thank you so much!

I never though it would ever happened to me. i opened word document from my e-mail to finish the paper I was working on and closed it without saving in on my hard drive. I was devasted, 6 hours of work went waste! I was trying to locate it by all means possible, searched tepm files, word recovery files and couldn't find it. I downloaded couple of free document recovery programs but it didn't help.I followed the instructions posted by Francesco, found the file in DOS list, but it didn't copy. Then i decided to purchase EASEUS Data Recovery and it found and restored my lost data! So happy!

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