The Quick Save option was notorious for that. You can use the Inspect Document options to remove hidden text. I did mention being able to open the Word file in Notepad. You have to be willing to skip past the high ASCII codes of its formatting to get to the text parts. The saved blocks of text are there for Undo purposes and the file is supposed to be rewritten when it is saved, which is why Undo no longer works after a File Save. Trying to get average users to use real templates (.DOT files) with just the boilerplate in them or to use New From Existing so they can delete what is not necessary is nearly as frustrating as trying to get users to use styles. You could argue that styles should not be necessary for simple documents, but it is necessary to know about them in Word because of how the file is constructed. Don Lesser Pioneer Training, Inc. 139B Damon Road, Ste 2 Northampton, MA 01060 (413) 387-1040 (413) 586-0545 (fax) dlesser at ptraining.com www.ptraining.com -----Original Message----- From: hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net [mailto:hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net] On Behalf Of Chris Hoogendyk Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 4:07 PM To: dstevens at tryandfindit.com Cc: Tom Adams ~ Reelife Productions & Folktography; Hidden-Tech Tech Subject: Re: [Hidden-tech] retrieving "saved over' word doc ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area. ** If you did, we all thank you. I'm surprised no one mentioned that MS Office documents are notoriously bloated, at least in part because deleted and edited blocks of text are still hidden in the file, just not displayed by the application. So, if it is a document you are familiar with and you are willing to do some reconstruction, you can make a copy and open it with a plain text editor. We had an experience one time of getting an excel file with a quote for an expensive piece of equipment. Opening the file with a text editor, we found remnants of the previous quote to another customer from which ours was edited. The other quote was for less. So, in our response, we called the salesperson and said, "but you quoted $x to company Y," without saying where we got the information. The embarrassed salesman backed down, and we saved some money. This is a good reason for starting fresh rather than endlessly editing the same document just to get the template, especially when there is sensitive data in the document. -- --------------- Chris Hoogendyk - O__ ---- Systems Administrator c/ /'_ --- Biology& Geology Departments (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center ~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst <hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu> --------------- Erdös 4 On 10/13/10 3:36 PM, dstevens at tryandfindit.com wrote: > > Hey Tom, > > There was a program I used a while ago to retrieve deleted files and deleted from the trash > files..... can't remember if you could retrieve different versions of a file...... although I > think this software would work.... Let me see if I can find the name of it. > > TFI Enterprises > Donald M. Stevens > 785 Williams Street, # 142 > Longmeadow, Ma 01106 > Office: 413.209.8333 > Cell: 860.614.4153 > Email: dstevens at tryandfindIT.com <mailto:dstevens at tryandfindIT.com> > > > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: [Hidden-tech] retrieving "saved over' word doc > From: "Tom Adams ~ Reelife Productions & Folktography" > <tomadams at gmail.com <mailto:tomadams at gmail.com>> > Date: Wed, October 13, 2010 9:08 am > To: Hidden-Tech Tech <hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net > <mailto:hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net>> > > mornin, hidden-techers > > posting question from a colleague of mine: is there a way to retrieve a document's previous > version before it was saved? > > . > Regards, > > Tom Adams > 413.575.9707 > Williamsburg, MA > Director/Owner > Reelife Productions <https://mail.google.com/mail/goog_2146952357> website > <http://www.reelifeproductions.com/> > cool digital media stuff using technology to educate, entertain & enlighten since 1996 > Reelife's Youtube Channel <http://www.youtube.com/reelife> > Reelife's Facebook Page <http://www.facebook.com/reelife> > Folktography by Tom website <http://www.folktographybytom.com/> > Folktography by Tom's Facebook Page <http://www.facebook.com/folkography> > Tom's other Links <http://web.me.com/ReelifeProductions> > _______________________________________________ Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.net Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion list. If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members page on the Hidden Tech Web site. http://www.hidden-tech.net/members