Saving edited attachments

I have quite some tasks that are made by forwarding emaisl with attachments. When I am working on the attachment and save it as another file name (but unfortuantely in the same folder as the original), it dissappears as soon as omnifoucs is closed. So all the changes are undone and only the original file is saved in the com.omnigroup.omnifocus2.macappstore. is there a way to recover the edited file?

This sort of data recovery may be better handled by working directly with one of our Support Humans. Please email omnifocus@omnigroup.com (or possibly urgent@omnigroup.com if you need an answer quite promptly) to see if those files are still stored somewhere.

Wish I could help you there. Usually, I put files into Dropbox and then control-click to copy the shared link. I paste that into the notes section of the OmniFocus task. Then I’ll click on it to have my Mac open it from there. I will embed files into OmniFocus only for reference.

I already did, no response until now:-(

My apologies for the delay; I just sent responded via email, and hope you’re able to recover your work!

For anybody else that finds themselves in a similar situation with Word:

If you open an embedded attachment in Word, and then Save As…, Word will default to saving that document inside of a /private/var/folders/ directory that actually belongs to OmniFocus 2 – consequently, Word won’t list the document in the Open Recent menu. The name of that directory appears to be variable, so I am unable to provide you with a fixed location to check.

Trying the same steps again will likely result in Word revealing the location in question:

  1. Open the same document for editing, from OmniFocus.
  2. Once it opens in Word, hold down the Command key and click on the title of the document, in the window title bar.
  3. This will pop-down a listing of where the file is stored on your computer, with com.omnigroup.OmniFocus2 right under the file name; select com.omnigroup.OmniFocus2.
  4. This will open a folder in Finder, that may contain the file that you’re trying to locate.

If the document isn’t there, I’m afraid that Spotlight won’t find it, either – but there is at least one free 3rd party tool that might. EasyFind, available from http://www.devontechnologies.com/download/products.html searches on your drive directly, rather than being reliant upon the Spotlight index. Once it’s installed, enter your best guess at a document name (or contents, if you change the selection on the left pane), and make sure that “Include: Invisible Files & Folders” is checked on the bottom left pane. In my case, this did locate a file that Word could not.

And if you need any further help, please email support@omnigroup.com, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we’re able!

dear Orion, thanks for your help. I am afraid the document has vanished. I tried easyfind in all the volumes and backups, including hidden files, however nog edited document was found. I think I have to start over from the beginning. If you have any other ideas, please let me know!