"Jim Phillips" <[log in to unmask]> wrote in message
news:a3bn3s0oc0@enews4.newsguy.com...
> Does anyone have any ideas about how to recover a document in MS Works?
> Some guy here was working on an existing document when he got the
> "Application has performed an illegal operation" message and Works shut
> down.  Now the document exists, but is empty.  The document had been saved
> prior to the "illegal operation" message, so I'm hoping there is a way to
> recover this.

Welcome to a taster of the post-HP3000 world :-(

If 'the document exists but is empty' under the name it was saved to in the
prior save, then I fear Works has blatted it.

Your first step is to make sure no further saving is done on the affected
machine (oops, too late, I bet).

Second step is to search the machine for files starting with a tilde ~
These are the temporary files, and it's just possible there is one with the
document in it. Look for  ~ files around the right date and time, and around
the right size. Open any likely candidates with Notepad (not Works), and see
if the contents are recognisable.
Expect to recover your text maybe, but not your formatting. Though if you
find something that looks pretty intact, copy it off that machine (floppy,
over the network, but *not* back to the original machine's hard drive) with
a new name and a Works extension, and see if Works will open it (on that
different machine).

If all this turns up nothing useful, the next step is to use an Undelete
program (Norton, etc), and see if your document, or a recent draft of it is
lurking deleted but still intact on that machine. Again *don't* install an
Undelete on the machine; use it from a floppy, or whatever.

Good hunting!

--
Roy Brown

New Devil's Dictionary:

Platform (noun); something you hope customers can readily depart from  (as
in railroad station, HP3000, etc.)

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