Devastated! Mac overwrittes a week work with old content

[benbenasc]

Hello,

I am really desperate for help. I have been working on a word document for a week, continuously saving, literally for every sentence I wrote. An hour ago, my computer just freezes and shuts down. When the document opens again, it is a week-old version of the document that opens, leaving me no option to do anything. I have looked in my autorecovery files and there is nothing saved.

Please please please I am devastated - can anyone advise??

 

[honestone]

First of all, which Mac OS are you running under?

Secondly, what specific Mac model do you use?

Have you been making any kind of backup? As it is, Apple's free Time Machine has been built into the OS since Leopard, OS 10.7. That is probably the "easiest" to implement, but not necessarily the quickest way to recover from a disaster. A number of folks around here use it (I prefer SuperDuper!, but to each their own).

 

[benbenasc]

Hello, thank you so much for answering. I am using an OSX Yosemite 10.10.4 and I am just using autosave.

I am definitely starting to use Time Machine now

 

[honestone]

Thanks for that info. By the way, a new version of Yosemite, OS 10.10.5, came out last week. You can get the Combo Updater from here:

'https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1832?locale=en_US

 

[benbenasc]

Thanks so much. Do you have any idea if I can recover my file?

And what I don't understand is - why would word overwrite my file with a version that is a week old? I just dont get it. Why not with the content I saved yesterday, or the day before?

 

[benbenasc]

I have just realised that documents for 2 days have disappeared from my computer - what is going on? Please help anyone...

 

[honestone]

Wondering if you have some kind of virus on your machine. What you can do is download, install, and run the very good freeware program Malwarebytes (formerly AdwareMedic), available from here:

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/52105/malwarebytes-anti-malware

Try it as soon as you can, and let us know what the program found (if anything).

 

[Cory Cooper]

-Which version of Microsoft Office/Word?
-Where were the documents saved to?
-Have you only lost documents from the past two days, or others as well?

A good recommendation when using Word: Instead of relying on AutoSave/AutoRecover, each time you edit/make changes to a document, perform a Save As and give the document a name ending with the date - i.e. MyResume082215.doc. Documents don;t take up much space, and that way you will actually have multiple copies of the same document, and could only lose a revision or two.

Also, definitely maintain a good backup process like Time Machine, or a clone-based solution like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. You could also make a copy of very important documents on a USB flash drive or additional external drive.

C