[pjbock]

Please help! I was working on a presentation in power point, hit "save" and my whole computer (ibook g4) froze. Would not respond to anything, ended up having to shut down. When i resumed power point there was no backup file like there should have been, and i can no longer open the file i was working on (it says it is either in use, corrupted, or unrecognizable). I have tried to recover it with a recovery software, but it can't be found, and i don't know where macs store temporary files. anyone have any thoughts on how to get it back? it's many hours of work down the drain otherwise.
P

[Thinine]

Check your ~/Documents folder for the Microsoft Userdata folder. There might be a backup in there.

[PurpleGiant]

...surely it will have your last version saved? Or was it really hours of work you did before saving?

[C.J. Moof]

I've seen ppt hose the file you're working on during save, more than once. The last save should be there, but sometimes it's lost. That's why I always encourage my staff to periodically save presentation1.ppt, presentation2.ppt, ect.

Lousy, but the way it is.

[philm]

I would try the following. Create a new, blank file and see if you can Insert... Slides from File... from your existing presentation. Or, try and open the corrupt file in another program. What about one of the open source equivalents of Office? Try and open it in NeoOffice/J, or even in Word to see if you can recover some of the text at least.

[Kristoff]

Office sucks.

I am really liking iWork stuff, but too bad the majority of the people around still use Windows/Office.
It's just too bad there's not a real open true xml based format for these things (word processor, presentation, spreadsheet)

[ghporter]

I wouldn't say that "Office sucks." I would, however, say that it's way too much application for what most people need and want. Or more precisely it's a bunch of applications that are too much for most users. You have to work pretty hard to get out of Office apps what they can provide, and unfortunately PowerPoint is one of the worst culprits.

Supposedly the next version of Office will be entirely XML based (with some sort of tool for updating your files to the new format from the old). I will be looking forward to seeing this happen; XML files should be much smaller, load faster, and be actually fixable when MS, your computer, or the demons of IT disfunctionality get mad at you!

[CaptainHaddock]

Even in an Office/Powerpoint environment, I highly recommend Keynote 2. It's easier to use in my opinion, very stable, integrates better with OS X, and outputs PPT files just fine.