File recovery not working

Hello,

I accidentally moved my invoice to the recycle bin yesterday. After a few tries of running Recuva, I was able to locate the file and recover to the desktop. A window popped up asking if I wanted to save the file to the original drive, saying that it could cause an issue with recovery. I tried to select No but nothing happened when I did. I then clicked yes and the file was saved to my desktop but when I clicked on the icon I got a dialogue box stating to make sure that the file name was not corrupt or damaged as the computer could not open the file. I don't know how to do this?!!! Please help me recover my invoice so that I can get paid please.

This is the Info from the Info Tab upon recovery:

Filename: ~$Invoice #150.xlsx

Path: G:\

Size: 165 bytes (165)

State: Not deleted

Creation time: 10/26/18 11:28

Last modification time: 10/26/18 11:28

Last access time: 11/08/18 00:00

Comment: No overwritten clusters detected.

1 cluster(s) allocated at offset 185339

It shows that the state is NOT DELETED but I cannot search for it on my computer or my flash drive.

I presume you can't rename it?

The file is 165 bytes in size. I very much doubt that there's anything of use in there. Files sent to the recycler have their names changed to $Innnnnn.ext and $Rnnnnnn.ext. The $I file is an index and was (up to Win 10) 145 bytes in size. Perhaps this is what you have found. The $R component is the actual file data. That's the one you want.

It's my invoice, about 2 weeks of entries. I did try renaming the document but I'm still getting an error message that says to make sure the file is not corrupt. The only file that is showing is this: ~$Invoice#150.xlsx and this is the only one that is showing as a result of Recuva. I have even gone to the extent of downloading another file recovery software in hopes of getting my document back. How do I check to see if the file is corrupt? This is something that it is asking me to do.

If you open an existing ExCel spreadsheet a temporary file is created called ~$Filename.xlsx. This is 165 bytes in size. If you open an ExCel file called Invoice #150.xlsx a file of 165 bytes is created called ~$Invoice #150.xlsx. Forget what I said about the recycler, this is (I believe) what you have recovered and are trying to open. I can create such a file and open it easily, so I don't know why you are having any difficulty. However, it isn't the file you want. The empty ExCel file I created to test this is 7.63 kb in size. No valid Excel file is 165 bytes in size.

Forget this file, it will get you nowhere. It appears to be left behind after a crash of either ExCel or your pc at some point. You need to search for another ExCel file and. depending on how many you find, recover them to a folder on another drive and then look through them to see if you have found your invoice,. Don't bother with files of 165 bytes.

Good troubleshooting Augeas

Thank you Augeas. I am only seeing that temp file. I will try this and see if it works. Thank you.