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1648. I emailed my work to myself, opened it from the email, made some changes and then saved it but can now no longer find the updated copy - what has happened to it?
If you open an attachment from an email, the first thing you should do before making any changes is Save as..., saving the document to your N:drive (Documents), or to a suitable location on your computer or to a USB Memory Stick. Once you have done this you will be be able to continue working on the document as normal, secure in the knowledge that any changes you make (and subsequently save) will be retained.
When you open an attachment directly from an email, the email program (whether a "client" or a webmail interface) saves a copy in a temporary area on the computer's hard drive (C: drive). The location of this area varies depending upon the settings on the machine but it is usually within a folder with the name "temp". Documents can sometimes be found before logout using by searching the C:drive.
However, due to the way the ITS student PCs are set up, the computer's hard drive does not retain saved files and therefore any files saved to the C: drive are deleted upon logout and any changes made to them since opening are lost. No changes can be made to the the email attachment itself as stored in your mailbox because email contents are read-only.
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This is question number 1648, which appears in following categories:
created on 2010-03-16 by Chris Limb
last updated on 2012-03-01 by Andy Clews