How to recover a renamed file?

Recovery in Writer fails, because I have renamed the file (or directory, or moved it to another directory). I cannot for the life of me remember how the path and filename were before, which would probably allow for the recovery. Is there another way of recovering my document?

If you moved and renamed the file, only the file explorer will help you. Mostly he has a search function. If it is e.g. is a Writer file, you can enter “.odt” in the search field (without “”).
You should be in the directory of your drive in which you are looking for. This will show you all of Writer’s documents. I wish you success!

PS: LibreOffice has lost the link and can no longer determine where your file is located.

@Hrbrgr: OP’s question does not seem to ask how to find the name under the new name but how to tweak recovery information to point it to the new file. On other words, is it possible to patch the recovery file (which name? where is it stored?) to make it think it is related to another file?

@ajlittoz I think both are possible. How should he recover if he does not know where his document is? But you can gladly give the OP a better answer. :-)) I like to learn.

@Hrbrgr: do you know where the recovery information is located? In user’s LO-private directory? In order to have a look at it, how can I cause recovery data to be created?

So to reiterate and clarify: I do know where my file is located. After the reboot that made the recovery necessary I have changed the filename and/or path/directory, and that is why the recovery fails. I cannot remember what the filepath/filename was before. That is why I am asking if there is another way to recover the autosaved work.

Hello - the RecoveryList and thus the original filename is in registrymodifications.xcu in your user profile. But as per my own test it is not sufficient to copy the file back to its original location.

Hello - your recovery file should be in <UserProfile>/backup/<original_filename>_0_<appextension>. If this does not exist anymore, then you probably won’t no longer be able to recover (besides you have some sophisticated tool, which can recover deleted files from the filesystem).

It is likely that LO sets safety “gates” in the recovery data to prevent recovery if the original file has been modified since (in order not to lose newer modifications). It may be in the form of a time stamp either in registrymodifications.xcu or in the …/backup/… file. Since copying back to original location changes creation date and modification date, you probably need to make some dirty patch somewhere. I met this situation with changed templates not causing document style update until I changed a time stamp in the document XML. Have a try, but make copies first.