I am giving a very indepth course starting on Monday 12 December for which I have been preparing for the past two weeks by pulling off research from the net and quoting from books.

I haves been working in Word. The entire course was saved on my desktop under the title of the course. There are 9 documents (all world documents) each containing many pages of work.

This morning the entire folder is GONE! I have done a search to find the documents but the computer cannot find these files. When i open Word, the documents are still listed as the last ones opened. When I try to open from Word the computer tells me 'invalid path'.

This is a total train smash to me. I cannot rewrite the course in 4 days. (Even more worrying, is how did this happen?? Neither my husband nor my daughter will do such a thing, and you can be sure I did not do it!)

Please please can someone help me to retrieve the lost data? I don't know much about computers, so you will have to have patience.

The system is running on Vista Home Basic and I have been working in Word2007.

If anyone can help, I will truly be eternally greatful.

i know that there are programs that can recovery old files. might look into that.

Your looking for data recovery software. Next time back it up on flash drive or CD

I sent you a private message.

Do a system restore to the last point you had it on there.
2nd.

Originally posted by AllUrChips
Do a system restore to the last point you had it on there.
2nd.

System restore will not recover data

Don't tacle this yourself. You could do more harm than good. Take it to a well established computer repair store. A tech will have a good understanding of Windows architecture and of the possible things that could have happened. This is your best shot outside of paying big bucks for professional data recovery where you would likely have to send your hard drive away also. This advice comes from someone who has done data recovery for many people.

Please perform following steps to find your folder

1. Open My computer.

2. Please double click on C: (System Partition).

3. Double click on Documents and Settings.

4. Double click on your User Name.

5. Double click on Desktop option to see your folders.

You may also try showing all hidden files and folders. Follow these steps to do that:

1. Open Windows Explorer (Windows Key + E).
2. Click on Tools menu.
3. Click on Folder Options...
4. Click on the View Tab.
5. Select the radio button corresponding to "Show Hidden files and folders".
6. Click Apply button.
7. Click OK.
8. Close everything.
9. Go back to your Desktop and check if you could see the folders that you've been looking for.

I hope this helps.

if somebody did delete them accidentally, then they will be in the "recycle bin".
One in a million chance, but its worth a look.

WHOA! Before you do anything drastic, consider the obvious. Open your Recycle Bin and look there first. I don't believe a search will normally turn up documents in the Recycle Bin.

I'm not suggesting you're stupid; I've done the same thing, and I'm head of the IT Department.

I'm going to second the idea that you should not tackle this alone, but seek a computer guru. Look in the recycle bin, and if you don't find it, seek help -

Best of luck -