How to "undelete" an overwritten Indesign file?

[ErikMagnusson]

Hello, friends. Can you give me some help?

I was using Indesign CS on a Mac G5 with OS 10.3.9 running. My document was called "abc.indd" (a much simplified name for the sake of illustration). I wanted to make a PDF of the document, to send it to a publisher, so I "exported" the file as a PDF, as I often do, and was going to save it to the desktop.

Normally Indesign asks me to name the new file, when exporting, and I type in a name, but this time I had happened to "copy" the file name from the original (since the real name was rather long, and had lots of understrokes, etc.), and I pasted that name into the dialog box, rather than typing it afresh. What I didn't realize is that I had copied as part of the name the file extension itself from the Indesign file. (i.e., instead of copying only the "abc" I had copied "abc.indd") Now I was saving my PDF file as "abc.indd;" it was still a working PDF, but I now had two files on the computer with the same name, in different locations.

I went to move the new, mislabeled PDF file to the folder where I had kept the Indesign file, and the computer asked if I wanted to replace the old file of the same name. Thinking it was just a back-up copy that I had made, I agreed, not paying attention to the full name and extension of the files in question. The computer effectively "overwrote" my original Indesign file with this new PDF file, because both of them were called "abc.indd" at this point. I thereby lost fifteen hours worth of work in the original (now overwritten) Indesign file.

I understand that some software can "undelete" files emptied from the trash can, but few, I suppose, support *.indd files. What is worse, this file was not really "deleted" at all, but actually "overwritten."

Of course, I will be sure to back up all my work a little better, from now on, but, in the meantime, what can I do to recover the file?

 

[jimoblak]

File recovery software rarely cares about the type of files it recovers so restoring the INDD file should be no trouble with that kind of software.

But you may have blown this opportunity by overwriting.

Try searching for 'recovery' at versiontracker.com

 

[ErikMagnusson]

Jimoblak, thank you for the suggestion.

I did search Versiontracker a bit, but the one program I found for OSX, FileSalvage, CLAIMED to support only the applications on its long list, which included Quark Xpress, but not Indesign.

In fact, I "replaced" the Indesign file, but I use the term "overwrite," perhaps incorrectly. Someone suggested that the file was not really overwritten at all, although from my point of view, it did. (I do not know much about the technical aspect of how files are deleted)

Thank you for the lead, at least.

Any other ideas? Anyone?

 

[jmgalvin]

You can try goin to Find in Finder and searching for any items with the name of the lost file, Don't use the file extension in the search term and use "contains" as the search parameter.

Then, in find, add a search parameter and select "visibility" in the left drop down menu. Select visible and invisible from the right drop down menu.

I doubt any of this will help unless you saved a copy of teh original somewhere, but it can't hurt to take a look.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[ErikMagnusson]

JMGalvin,

That's a clever suggestion.

I had tried searching for invisible files, but not the way that you suggested. I will try your idea.

One problem I found (and also when I tried a file-recovery program), is that I wondered whether these "deleted" files would be renamed somehow by the system, to the point of not being recognizable to me, unless I went in and opened each one of the hundreds listed in the results. I guess your answer would be that files are not renamed when deleted or hidden? (I seem to recall that at least the first letter was changed to an asterisk or something--I'm not a programmer, and don't know much about the technical aspect).