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User profile for user: stpedler
stpedler Author
User level: Level 1
22 points

recover rtf file

My husband has been creating a list of his favorite songs for the last several days on an rtf document on his MacBookPro. TextEdit 1.9.

He wanted to email the list to someone and selected all, copied and went to paste it in an email and only one song was there.

He went back to the rtf and there was only the one song there. I wasn't there so I don't know what happened. I tried control z, but it was too late. The document had been opened and shut a few times. The icon for the file is on the desktop and it shows a whole list on the little icon.

Is there some way to recover all of the info that was on the rtf file? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Mar 27, 2015 8:25 AM

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10 replies
User profile for user: a brody
a brody
User level: Level 10
82,931 points

Mar 27, 2015 9:05 AM in response to stpedler

A backup can be a hard drive, a flash drive, iCloud or internet storage, or a compact disc that you burn to. It is wise when creating files, to save documents as you work on them. But also you need to save it to a separate location. Instead of copy/pasting the RTF, you can send the RTF file as an attachment. In Mac OS X Mail, use the paperclip icon to attach files to your message as you compose them. If it is not there, add it with View menu -> Customize toolbar. Most computers can read RTFs now. RTF is readable by either TextEdit on a Mac, or Microsoft Word, or one of its free counterparts like LibreOffice or OpenOffice. But the point is, you want to always make sure there are two separate distinct copies of data at all times. A backup hard drive is only as good as the backup software used to copy the information to it. And generally, unless the program saves the document, the backup will not keep a copy of the document. So when making data:


1. Save data frequently.

2. Copy to a second source after saving.


You can look at your RTF program to find out if autosave was turned on. If it was, a temporary file may still exist with it somewhere on the hard drive.

See this page more about data recovery:

My data has become inaccessible, and I don't have a backup!

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User profile for user: stpedler
stpedler Author
User level: Level 1
22 points

Mar 27, 2015 9:27 AM in response to a brody

Thanks for the extra tips on data saving. For myself, I always save data, my husband is resistant. Maybe this will change his habits because he lost several days worth of work.

I looked at the preferences on Textedit - Saving files says Automatic.

In terms of seeing if there is a temporary file somewhere on the macbook pro, I am confused by the link you sent.

This persons problem is not the same as mine. step one doesn't seem to apply. They can't access their files, I want the past temp. copy of one file.


The data recovery programs - do you happen to know if they work for finding a temporary copy of an rtf document or have you tried any of them yourself - probably not as you are good at saving data.

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User profile for user: Allan Eckert
Allan Eckert
User level: Level 9
79,512 points

Mar 27, 2015 9:33 AM in response to stpedler

Something I picked up in my 25 years of server support in IT.


Doing that work has almost made me paranoid about backups.


The simplest way to get started with backups on a Mac is Time Machine. The software is part of OS X. The only thing would need is a disk drive to backup for Time Machine to put its backups. A Time Capsule would work seeing as how you have a MBP.

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recover rtf file

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