File data lost following blackout

[PossumGirl]

We live in a small village that is subject to occasional power failures. We had one this afternoon while a file was open in Word 2007. When the power came back and we reopened the file, the most recent version (saved right before the blackout) was gone and was replaced by one from approximately one month ago!

I tried searching the hard drive for text that would have been in the new file without success.

Then I did a restore of Windows to last night and reopened Word. This time, the most recently found file dated from this past Friday. At first, when it came on screen, it was the same "wrong" file, then suddenly it was the correct file again! We quickly saved a copy on a back up drive. The computer had to reboot again, due to a software update, and when it came back, the proper file from the C drive was once again missing! Luckily, we had the back-up that we had just saved. I told my partner to copy it over but to call it something else.

So, the question is: how is this possible? What could have happened to even cause such a thing?

Thanks for any input.

[jscher2000]

Any particular case is difficult to explain, but here are some general thoughts.

In earlier versions, Word saved your changed document to a temporary working file, then when you closed the document, Word deleted the original, renamed the latest temporary file to the original file names, and disposed of the other temporary files. If you have turned on viewing on hidden files in Windows, you may see some .tmp and other temporary files in the working directory along with your document.

Windows' system restore normally doesn't have any effect on document folders, so I'm not sure whether that actually was a factor.

Having documents change on screen while you watch is not a behavior I've seen in earlier versions of Word. Perhaps that is something new in 2007, reconciling some temp files or auto-recovery saves into the main document?

[PossumGirl]

I've been using Word since it's earliest incarnation and have never seen anything like this happen before either. The worst thing that ever happened before this was to have a power failure in the middle of saving on a floppy on my old Kaypro, which basically erased ALL the data on the disc. What makes this strange is that the power failure happened following a save, while the document was just open on the screen, but not being used.

It may remain one of those unanswered mysteries...