Author Topic: Windows Vista help needed. URGENT!  (Read 1271 times)

Hawkmoon

  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 27,776
Windows Vista help needed. URGENT!
« on: May 29, 2010, 12:54:34 AM »
Lordie, I despise Microsoft.

My wife's only computer is a fairly recent notebook that arrived with Vista Home Edition pre-installed. Other than being slower than molasses in January it has been okay, and she's not a power user so the pretty graphics more than make up for the lack of speed (in her estimation). However ... Houston, we have a problem:

She received an e-mail with attachments of several VERY important legal documents that had been roughly translated into Spanish, and she was to clean up the translations into grammatically correct Espanol. The documents are in Word. She opened each document by clicking it in the list of attachments in the e-mail, and it duly opened in Word. She then made the necessary editorial revisions, and hit ... SAVE. Not SAVE AS ... just SAVE.

And now we can't find them to do anything else with them. Actually, we CAN find them, we just can't access them. She still has the e-mail, so we can still open them up by clicking the attachment. If I then hit SAVE AS, it tells me I am in a directory that's just a random sequence of letters and numbers. As I click successively higher in the hierarchy, I discover that I eventually get up to C:/USERS/NAME/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/TempInternetFiles ... and then some other stuff.

Cool. I remember MS-DOS and I know what a file directory tree looks like. So I fire up Windows Explorer and go looking for the gibberish sub-sub-subdirectory so that I can move or copy all the files over to a project directory in her DOCUMENTS directory.

No joy. It seems that AppData is hidden. Windows Explorer in Vista, unlike in XP, doesn't allow me to see the inner workings of Windows. I don't even get to see the program files directory, or the TempInternetFiles directory.

Is there a way to set something, somewhere in Vista, so I can see and access the files I need? I know enough not to go deleting program files, but I NEED to be able to chase down these documents and be able to move them around. My wife is sufficiently un-computer savvy as to make me appear almost knowledgeable, so it's unlikely I will ever be able to explain to her that in such cases she has to use SAVE AS rather than SAVE, and click up the tree and then back down until she gets to where she wants the documents. In short, she is the type of computer user Microsoft had in mind when they progressively hid more and more stuff in Windows to protect users from ever having to think about what they're doing.

HELP!
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
100% Politically Incorrect by Design

Monkeyleg

  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 14,589
  • Tattaglia is a pimp.
    • http://www.gunshopfinder.com
Re: Windows Vista help needed. URGENT!
« Reply #1 on: May 29, 2010, 01:02:36 AM »
How about emailing them to someone else and having that person open and do a "save as," then sending them back to you?

I'll PM you my email address if you'd like to do that.

Marnoot

  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 2,965
Re: Windows Vista help needed. URGENT!
« Reply #2 on: May 29, 2010, 01:21:46 AM »
You need to enable Show Hidden Files, in your Folder Options; that will show hidden directories as well. I don't have a Vista machine in front of me at the moment, so I can't remember the exact menu path to take to get to those options, unfortunately.

RaspberrySurprise

  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 2,020
  • Yub yub Commander
Re: Windows Vista help needed. URGENT!
« Reply #3 on: May 29, 2010, 01:29:48 AM »
Open file
Copy
Paste into new word file
Save
???
PROFIT!!!
Look, tiny text!

robear

  • friend
  • Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 359
Re: Windows Vista help needed. URGENT!
« Reply #4 on: May 29, 2010, 02:48:51 AM »
Since you saved them from within your email client, can you open them up again in the email client and THEN do a SAVE AS?

lee n. field

  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 13,822
  • tinpot megalomaniac, Paulbot, hardware goon
Re: Windows Vista help needed. URGENT!
« Reply #5 on: May 29, 2010, 09:07:24 AM »
Quote
No joy. It seems that AppData is hidden. Windows Explorer in Vista, unlike in XP, doesn't allow me to see the inner workings of Windows. I don't even get to see the program files directory, or the TempInternetFiles directory.

Start, run, "appdata", should open explorer at her appdata location.

No "run"?  Making the run menu option show up is in an option in the taskbar properties.

Yeah, see if it can be fished out of the temp location.
In thy presence is fulness of joy.
At thy right hand pleasures for evermore.

Hawkmoon

  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 27,776
Re: Windows Vista help needed. URGENT!
« Reply #6 on: May 29, 2010, 10:52:20 AM »
You need to enable Show Hidden Files, in your Folder Options; that will show hidden directories as well. I don't have a Vista machine in front of me at the moment, so I can't remember the exact menu path to take to get to those options, unfortunately.

Yeah, and Windows Explorer in Vista doesn't look much like Windows Explorer in XP. I tried to find a way to allow viewing hidden files, and I couldn't find it. If that's the answer, if someone can walk me through the steps I would be very grateful.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
100% Politically Incorrect by Design

tyme

  • expat
  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 1,056
  • Did you know that dolphins are just gay sharks?
    • TFL Library
Re: Windows Vista help needed. URGENT!
« Reply #7 on: May 29, 2010, 10:55:49 AM »
Support Range Voting.
End Software Patents

"Four people are dead.  There isn't time to talk to the police."  --Sherlock (BBC)

RocketMan

  • Mad Rocket Scientist
  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 13,980
  • Semper Fidelis
Re: Windows Vista help needed. URGENT!
« Reply #8 on: May 29, 2010, 04:30:21 PM »
Could she open Word and then tell it to open the last saved file?  It might pick it out of that appdata location.
Not a big Vista person here.  I've done this under Word 2003 / WinXP any number of times when I've stupidly lost track of a saved document's location.
If there really was intelligent life on other planets, we'd be sending them foreign aid.

Conservatives see George Orwell's "1984" as a cautionary tale.  Progressives view it as a "how to" manual.

My wife often says to me, "You are evil and must be destroyed." She may be right.

Liberals believe one should never let reason, logic and facts get in the way of a good emotional argument.

Hawkmoon

  • friend
  • Senior Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 27,776
Re: Windows Vista help needed. URGENT!
« Reply #9 on: May 29, 2010, 10:38:40 PM »
not rocket science

http://www.google.com/search?q=show+hidden+folders+in+vista

Bless you!

Setting folder options to display hidden files/folders got me to AppData. The TempInternetFiles folder still wasn't accessible, it took showing system files to be able to see into that.

And what a revelation! I thought temporary files were supposed to go away when you end a session. No wonder Microsoft doesn't weant us to see in there -- that folder has HUNDREDS of files in it. Of course, I don't know what any of them are, other than that some of them claim to be cookies. No more dedicated "Cookies" directory (excuse me, "folder") in Vista? I don't quite date bulk erase the entire mess, so I guess I'll download Ad-Aware and MalwareBytes and see what they say.

Thank you, thank you
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
100% Politically Incorrect by Design