How do I manually launch autorecovery in Calc?

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#1

The two files I’m looking to recover are both .ods and both have the hidden .~lock.filename.ods# files present in their respective directory locations. How do I go about feeding these into LO’s AutoRecovery process?

Windows update caught me unawares and LO was open. When I next launched Calc, the AutoRecovery dialog didn’t appear, the Recent Documents list wasn’t populated, View → Toolbars had a few enabled that I typically keep hidden, and Icon size & Icon style had been reset to (presumably) defaults. All else seems fine. I haven’t explored fully but the heavily customized toolbar I rely on remained intact so I figure I’ll go digging through my user profile backups only if I need to. I did try launching LO in safe mode and proceeding with the “Restore user config to last known working state” checkbox enabled but still no dice on the AutoRecovery.

#2

Click Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Paths to find the location of Temp and of Backup.
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Temp contains any autorecovery documents but you might have to click View > Show > Hidden items before you can see anything.
Look for folders named luxxxxxxxxx.tmp dated at the time of the crash/loss. Look for the largest file inside the folder with the same name and copy it to a working folder. Open LibreOffice and from within LibreOffice, open the copied file.
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Maybe there was a Backup made of your files. Navigate to Backup folder and copy the file(s) of the same name but with extension .bkp to a working folder. Open LibreOffice and from within LibreOffice, open the copied file.

#3

Hi, thank you so much. Temp didn’t have anything left in there from that session, and Backups had a different file from a day or two before this happened but neither of the two files in question unfortunately.

The C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice\4\user\registrymodifications.xcu file is where the AutoRecovery info usually lives, right? I’ve got Calc open and have saved a test file, made some unsaved changes to it, and am thinking I’ll close LO via the Windows Task Manager so I’ll have a template of sorts within the registrymodifications.xcu file and I can then edit it directly with the info needed to point it towards my two yet-to-be-recovered files. Terrible idea or might that work?

#4

If you modified the path to Temp in Options and then did “Restore user config to last known working state” then the previous path probably won’t be shown, only the default path. If you know the path to an earlier Temp folder then look there.
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You could search across your computer for any folders or files named luxxxxxxxxx.tmp. I use Everything because I find Windows Search too resource hungry to use.
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If you did not change the Temp folder and the folders/files are not in Temp then you are out of luck. For future reference, see Preventing data disaster - The Document Foundation Wiki

#5

Never would have occurred to me to try that, thank you! Got one of the two files recovered. There were a few others with the right datestamp but all were 0kb. No idea why they weren’t showing up in File Explorer with the rest, the path is the same. Ah well, having the changes with the one file recovered should allow me to much more easily get the other back up to date. Won’t have lost much progress in the end. Serves me right for falling asleep at the computer really.

What do the .~lock.filename.ods# files do? They’re only present when an open file has unsaved changes so I assumed they were involved in the AutoRecovery.

#6

See What is the purpose of the lock file?

In fact they are created when you open any file, and are deleted when the file is closed normally.

#7

Appreciate the clarification. You lot are tremendously helpful, thank you all again.

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