didn't save my powerpoint - can I open ppt14.pcb file?

[maryamk1e]

Hi,
I clicked "don't save" on my powerpoint presentation, because I thought I had already saved it on the network and didn't want to keep it locally. Now I see it wasn't saved anywhere. My autorecovery saves files every 10 minutes. When I open the powerpoint location I see ppt14.pcb file, which is only 1 KB. Is there any chance my file can be recovered it its latest format from this file? How do I open this file?

Thanks,
Maryam

[Rudi]

Hi Maryam,

Welcome to the lounge.

First, are you sure that you checked the network location in detail. It might be saved to the network but accidentally saved to a wrong folder. It could help to go back and search inside any nearby folders, or do a full search on the root drive looking for *.pptx files. Also how about older backups? If you might have these still floating around it could be helpful, and if all else fails you could try to use recovery software to undelete older backups that you (very recently) deleted. (See below for more details).

If the above fails and you cannot find the file, you can try the following:

There are two locations in PPT you can try

1. The FILE > Options > Save > AutoRecover Files (and check in this path for files. Here you will see the *.pcb files which are unfortunately not your presentation but special files that contain the application settings and data that are used by the software)
2. Go to FILE > Recent Presentations > Recover Unsaved Presentations (see image below - this will take you to a folder that also could contain unsaved work.

Image 007.jpg

If nothing above helps, see if this web page has any more info that you can try to do to salvage this file. I am not sure of the version you are using, so bear in mind that they use different locations for the unsaved data. This web page provides the different paths based on version too.

I'd normally also mention to try using a free app called Recuva to try to restore a deleted file, however your case is not so much a deleted file as it is an unsaved file.

[HansV]

In addition to Rudi's suggestions: the .pcb file is not a presentation. It contains customizations to PowerPoint, and it is not intended to be opened by the user. So just leave it alone.

[maryamk1e]

Thank you both.
Rudi, there was nothing in any of those locations. I am almost done redoing all the work again -three additional hours last night- so I think I will just go ahead and finish it. It was much faster the second time!
Thank you again.

M

[Rudi]

I think we have all been in your position, (at least once) in our lifetime. I clearly recall having to do a Word document all over again some years back, and I lost a large file of work that I saved on a flash drive, only to find that it didn't save correctly as I just pulled it out of the port of a temporary PC (without safely ejecting it).

A file recovery is never a sure thing.

TX for the feedback.

[DaveA]

With MS Office products, when ever you get the message on Close or Exit, then one needs to save the file, means that there were changes made or the new file has NOT been saved. It does not matter where these files are saved, you will not get the message again, if no changes have been made since the last save.

So bottom line, if one see this message, then one NEEDS to save or throw away the changes or new file.