I had an MS Word 2007 file on my Windows 7 system. I had it opened for a couple days, and during this time, the OS decided to FORCE a restart of my system (nice idea to default to this behavior, btw!), and while doing so completely obliterated my saved copy of the aforementioned file. This file is quite important to me, and I have tried to recover it by many different means thus far, to no avail. Included: 1) Use of at least six different "data recovery" applications. No luck. 2) Followed instructions of every single "recover lost word files" URL on the internet. No luck. 3) Repaired target HDD via CHKDSK in hopes of recovery of lost data and/or file handles. No luck. 4) Searched raw disk data for recognizable text. No luck. 5) Etc., etc., etc. Here is some miscellaneous info: a) The temporary hidden file MS Word creates upon opening a document (prefixed with "~$") remains. This is proof that this file was in fact saved before the disastrous decision by MS to reboot my system without my consent. However, this file merely contains user data. b) I had previously modified and saved the text of this file several times over several days, as well as copy/pasted it a few times just previous to the loss of data. The hard drive where it resided was 500GB in size. The text (or at least segments of it) is likely to still exist somewhere on this disk. During my fruitless searches for lost files using 3rd party applications, I encountered nearly everything I've ever written on that drive in the past two years, and in particular a group of items that I wrote at around the same time. This is another reason to suspect that significant amounts of the lost data I'm looking for are likely to be on the disk somewhere. c) Given that none of the 3rd party apps could find any part of the file in question, and in light of whatever EXACTLY occurred during the forced restart that would result in a saved file being dropped simply because it was open at the time of shutdown, it might be safe to say that I will not find it via any search (no matter how exhaustive) that relies upon the file system itself. However, given that MS Word 2007 apparently encrypts documents by default, it is not a simple matter to find the data via a scan of the drive for raw data (what do you search for?). *** SO, IN SUMMARY: *** I am somewhat confident that at least some of the missing data is in fact on this disk. Given the facts above, I am at an impasse as to how I might retrieve it. Any advanced advice or suggestions to help resolve this episode (and/or explain exactly what likely occurred) would be greatly appreciated! Possibly most helpful would be if anyone here has an intricate knowledge of the default encryption of MS Word 2007 and could suggest a manner of searching the drive for raw data (assuming I provide some known text strings from the .docx document) so that fragments of the lost data may be found regardless of any missing header information, etc., that would cause most 3rd party tools to lose such data. OR, equally, I would appreciate if anyone could direct to me to a resource or person who might be able to offer such suggestions. Thank you!

Hi, For data recovery issue, you can contact local date recovery shop for more help. In addition, for Office related issue, you can post in Microsoft Office forum for more assistants. Thanks,Vincent Wang TechNet Community Support

Thank you to all the experts here!