Undoing an accidental deletion

[susanwells]

Am using my husband`s laptop. He is left handed so has it set thus. Fine but somehow I keep accidentally deleting an e-mail or one of these threads by swiping thr wrong key. In Word, I know how to undo the last action but that toolbar doesn`t seem to appear on these or e-mail or other web-based pages..any advice ?Own laptop back from repair soon, DV, but it`s annoying. if I knew what key I was accidentally pressing I might stop doing it. It nevert happens with mine. We both have IBM laptops.:hearty

[bigcumba]

Any files should be in the recycle bin Susan, unless it's set up to bypass it and delete it completely. You can get undelete software which can get back stuff easily, but you usually need to have it already installed to get those files back

[susanwells]

recycle bin is empty. but why would a message I wrote on here and deleted by accident be in there anyway ?? :hearty

[MarcusMel]

but why would a message I wrote on here and deleted by accident be in there anyway ?? :hearty

What???!!!!

Common mistake is to highlight a whole bunch of text and replace it with a space by hitting the spacebar and then wondering where it has gone.

Pressing the ctrl key + Letter Z usually undoes most edit mistakes/accidents.

[bigcumba]

Ah, I thought you meant getting back a file you had deleted... my mistook :)

[susanwells]

ctrl plus z is a very useful hint. Thanks :hearty I am not good enough with the keys..:hearty But will it bring back something I deleted by accident and without quite knowing how I did it ? It is all because of this left handed thing..

[bigcumba]

you could of course take a screwdriver and prize off the keys you need to swap around, and you can replace them when you give the laptop back to hubby:D

[MarcusMel]

Could always try surgery!

and:D:D

have your arms swoped!

[radders]

Hi,

Try some of these recovery programmes (do a google search if I don't give the www):

Recover my files
Recover my photos
www.file-saver.com
www.east-tec.com/eraser/

There's a few more available ... google search 'recover deleted files' ..

Good luck


Radders

[Win2Win]

I asked in PCWorld, they said reformat the drive, and buy a new computer from them for a 200% markup year out of date machine......well, that's what they normally sell anyway :D

They actually managed to sell my soon to be ex-brother-in-law a 2y out-of-date laptop on 9 month free credit, so by the time he pays for it, it'll be 3y old :laugh Seen him coming.

[GlosRFC]

Ctrl-Z will only work when you're editing a file. Even then, there are limits as to how many times you can undo stuff. In some programs, particularly image-editing, you can set the number of undo levels, usually via an options item in the tools menu. More levels means you can go back to previous versions but the trade-off is that it will require more hard-space to temporarily write these versions.

Deleting a file is different. In some cases, the "deleted" file might be stored elsewhere. Normally this is the Recycle Bin if you've deleted it via Windows.

However, you mention messages/threads so it sounds to me like you're using Outlook Express - Outlook does have an undo button but it's not provided in Express. The good news is that you should have a folder called "Deleted Items". Double-click that folder and all your "deleted" messages/threads should be there - to undelete them just drag them back over to your "Draft Items" folder.

If your deleted messages/threads aren't there, then the option to save them has been turned off. You can turn it back on so that messages are saved in the "Deleted Items" folder by selecting the Tools menu and clicking Options. On the Maintenance tab, make sure the Empty messages from the 'Deleted Items' folder on exit box isn't checked.

I'll try to come up with a definite list of all the really useful CTRL keys.