Locked deleted files

[knewal]

Hello,

We use libreoffice at work and we back up our documents to google drive. The issue is one of our colleagues went a bit overboard with the file deleting and also removed some important xls files. Hapilly they were removed from google drive so we can find them in the trash. The issue is only the non hidden ~lock.docname.# apeared in the google drive trash, we resoted these but they wont open properly.
How does libreoffice deal with deteleted office documents that are backed up ?
Is there a way to unlock them since 90% of deleted .xls files apear like this ?
The original file name without the locks doesn’t apear niether when restored or in google drive trash.

Thank you Matt.

[anon73440385]

Hello,

.~lock.<docname># do not contain content related to , but only (textual) information, who is editing , since when, on which system (computer name) and using which user profile. These files are used to inform another instance of LibreOffice, that is being edited and the file will be deleted, if you close a document (you have finished editing). If you used a backup strategy "Copy user files from individual systems to Google Drive* I’d personally suggest to exclude these lock files. They are worthless if not even worse and causing problems, if you restore them to their original place. And if you find a lot of these lock files on google drive this may be simple due to the fact that by coincidence the backup of an individual system occurs, while the user of the respective system user was editing a document, the lock file has been created (and being backed up, because not being excluded from the backup). If the user finally deleted the file from his system (or moved it to another directory) nothing performs a cleanup on google drive.

Hope that helps.

[newbie-02]

hello @knewal,

1. be careful, think first then do,
2. if valuable data: no work on live data 'til problem is solved, make binary copies first,
3. afaik the ~lock… files are not! the documents in locked state, but lockfiles to block or manage parallel access by multiple users, it’s unlikely that you’ll find your data there,
4. check if you have local copies / backups, sometimes you have without knowing about, [tools - options - load/save - general - always create backup copies], if set try find it and do not! destroy it by new create or save actions,
5. i you had active ‘save auto recovery info every xxx minutes’ there may be tricks to use them even if the original file is lost,
6. there are! also functionalities of windows keeping temporary files, search the web for info as every setup is different,
7. sometimes they are in ‘temp’ folders, and sometimes doesn’t find them!
8. google may not show you all files if you are not the owner? citation: ‘Note: If you’re not the owner of the file, contact the owner to have them restore it.’,
9. if google is your last or only chance try to learn about (Delete and restore files in Google Drive - Android - Google Drive Help) or find someone familiar with it,
10. good luck,
11. do! backups to different media in the future …
12. if you need more help pls. tell a little more about your system, setup and versions,

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[knewal]

Ok guys thanks for the info unfortunately these files ar not recoverable. The files were kind of important in the sense it takes 3-4 days work to redo it. We will have to redo them…

In the future ill back up the files in others ways to.

Edit. I did understand that the lock files do not store any information but its only a tool for libreoffices. I mean ill back up the acctual document.

Thanks for the help

[anon73440385]

these files ar not recoverable.

You obviously did not understand my answer. Do not backup .~lock.<docname># at all. They do not contain any document content.

[anon73440385]

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