Maybe just roboirritablegeek.

Also? FUUUUUCCCCK! You know how when you're working later at night than you should be on something that has a deadline of tomorrow that you should have been doing all today but you didn't because one of your students showed up clearly needing to talk but not wanting to say so so you took her out for coffee instead of working on the work and you bring up a document from a cd and make some edits and then you realize that you need to save the edits, but you can't save on the cdr, so you do a save as, and because you're tired you click on the title of another very important document that resides on your hard drive accidentally and thus save the first document as the second document, and ignore the 'are you sure' message that pops up because you know what the message is supposed to say, and thus you annihilate the second, very important, resides only on this hard drive in its current form, document?

Is there anything you can do about that? Get back an earlier form of the document that you overwrote by save as?

Because I'm an ass and an idiot and I just did that. Tell me there's an easy painless way, Buffistas.

Liese, what hardware, OS, and application? There may be hope in backup directories, temp directories, and drive salvage software, but the hivemind will have to know where to start looking.

Yup, sorry. Was panicking too much to give info. Running MS Excel 2003, on XP home, HP pavilion laptop.

Hmmm...I dunno. I guess the first thing to try is to look for the last back-up copy of the file.

That's all I got, sorry.

I'm a little out of my depth here, but I found:

[link]

Excel backups have the original name and the suffix .xlk (with a displayed filetype of “Microsoft Excel Backup File”), and will appear in the same folder as the original.

Liese, you are likely screwed.

There. get that past then anything you might be able to salvage will be a step up.

I don't suppose there's an "undo save file"

Also, search your hard drive using Search for any documents, including hidden, created within the last day?

Check the software help for recovering/finding/using a backup file.

Otherwise? Give up immediately, and start from the backup file to re-do all the work you did, and be that much further ahead than spending time on fruitless efforts.

Basically unless your software is set to automatically backup, saving a file with the same name is a good way to obliterate an earlier file.

Liese, you are likely screwed.

Oh. I know. Own damn fault.

But thanks for the support.

And between your posts, it occurred to me to try...

Oh! Hallelujah! I am saved, saved!

The aforementioned mistake was made, mistakenly, in a folder other than the one where the aforementioned very important document was kept. Thereby overwriting not the actual very important document, but what turned out, in the end, to be the very important document's backup.

I have now backed up the original very important document, correctly saved the new document, deleted the offending overwritten document, and I am repenting of my backupless sins, and will do better in the future.

Hey, did you all techma me? 'Cause, yay Buffistas.

Huzzah Liese!

It might have been the extra sympathy~ma, because I've been in similar panics and found out that my mistake was in thinking I had made a mistake, when I was mistaken as to the magnitude of said mistake.

The aforementioned mistake was made, mistakenly, in a folder other than the one where the aforementioned very important document was kept. Thereby overwriting not the actual very important document, but what turned out, in the end, to be the very important document's backup.

Don't ya love it when a plan comes together?

I think Google's Keyhole technology has already been discussed, but has anyone tried it? (There's a free 7-day trial.)

Also, it's a subscription service, but I can't find pricing for the subscription.

It's not something that I need, but it's just So. Fucking. Cool.