Cannot access my story

[boilermaker27]

I have been working on a short story and have 140 pages written so far. I restarted my computer and now I cannot access it. I got a message that I locked it but I did not lock it. It was fine before I restarted my computer and now it is locked. When I click on it I get a page full of dashes, page and page full of dashes. What do I do? How do I unlock it? There was something that came up asking me if I wanted to unlock it but that did not work!

[RoryOF]

If you restarted computer with OpenOffice and the file open, then there is little hope. Find one of Recuva or PhotoRec on Internet, and use one of these to search for deleted files on your computer.

If you have an earlier version, do not overwrite that, as it will give you a start in any re-write that may be necessary.

[Hagar Delest]

I hope you had a backup, see: [Tutorial] The Dreaded Pound Signs: file reduced to ####. Good luck. I hope you had backups.