Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Cuireadh an snáithe seo sa chartlann. Cuir ceist nua má tá cabhair uait.

Where is my Excel file?

  • 4 fhreagra
  • 1 leis an bhfadhb seo
  • 13 views
  • Freagra is déanaí ó cor-el

more options

Excel crashed at work, in disgust I sent two .xlsx files to my home email address to work on them from there.

Once home I opened the email@gmail containing both of the files I had sent to myself. From within the email, I clicked on the "download" option.

A Firefox popup appears (as expected) and it asks "What should Firefox do with this file?".

The radio button is selected to Open with ~Microsoft Excel (default)~ in the dropdown as a default. Yay! That's exactly what I want to do. I opened the spreadsheets and spend the next three hours working on one spreadsheet -- I literally hit the little file icon to force a save about 20382 times because of what happened at work. I only used the second worksheet for reference and as a source of data (e.g. not making any updates to it, not "saving" it)

WHERE IS THE EXCEL FILE I UPDATED AND SAVED? It seems to have vanished. It is not on my hard drive, it is not on my OneDrive. What scares me the most is that the file is not even LISTED in Excel as a worksheet that I've recently worked on.

When I look at my download History in Firefox, I can SEE that it was a download ... but the Open Containing Folder option is greyed out / cannot be selected.

Any ideas? or was this a total waste of a Wednesday for me and my boss's data??

Excel crashed at work, in disgust I sent two .xlsx files to my home email address to work on them from there. Once home I opened the email@gmail containing both of the files I had sent to myself. From within the email, I clicked on the "download" option. A Firefox popup appears (as expected) and it asks "What should Firefox do with this file?". The radio button is selected to Open with ~Microsoft Excel (default)~ in the dropdown as a default. Yay! That's exactly what I want to do. I opened the spreadsheets and spend the next three hours working on one spreadsheet -- I literally hit the little file icon to force a save about 20382 times because of what happened at work. I only used the second worksheet for reference and as a source of data (e.g. not making any updates to it, not "saving" it) WHERE IS THE EXCEL FILE I UPDATED AND SAVED? It seems to have vanished. It is not on my hard drive, it is not on my OneDrive. What scares me the most is that the file is not even LISTED in Excel as a worksheet that I've recently worked on. When I look at my download History in Firefox, I can SEE that it was a download ... but the Open Containing Folder option is greyed out / cannot be selected. Any ideas? or was this a total waste of a Wednesday for me and my boss's data??

All Replies (4)

more options

When you directly open a file it's in temporary storage and you have to click Save As.. in Excel in order to save it.

more options

The file may still be on you e-mail unless you deleted it. Check the trash folder,

more options

Usually, Open uses the TEMP folder. You could try a deleted file recovery program to see whether you can rescue it:

https://www.piriform.com/recuva

more options

You should always use Save As to save the file in a different folder and possibly under another name if you directly open the file in a specific application to avoid such a dataloss.