Finding Hidden Attachments in Vista That You’ve Saved From Messages in Windows Mail (and Other Email Programs)

I recently had the problem of opening up an attachment in Windows Mail and then revising it for several hours, saving it constantly, but never opening the “save as” icon at the top of Word to save the file into My Documents, or the Desktop, or some other easily accessible location. The “save as” icon is the picture of the disk with a pencil, while the “save” icon is just a picture of the disk, and I was clicking on the disk icon to “save” rather than click the disk with pencil icon to “save as.” So the next day, after getting the computer up, I realized my mistake once I tried to find the file again. It took over an hour to find the information online that told me where I could find the file, and I went through a lot of frustrated agony in the meantime. So I’m writing this to tell Windows Vista users clearly and reasonably succinctly how to find files once they’ve made the same innocent mistake. It’s a detailed process, but not too hard if you take it step by step. (If you’re using XP and looking for a similarly lost attachment in Outlook, or Outlook Express, read on, because the following should apply to you as well.)

The Temporary Internet Files folder is where your missing file’s been stored by Vista, but Microsoft’s made it very hard to find this folder, even harder than it was in XP. Instead of calling it something simple like “Attachments” and making files in the folder findable through searching with the Vista search function, they’ve hidden it from the search function, called it Temporary Internet Files, and put it in a place no ordinary user would actually think to look. But again, it’s not as hard to find your missing file as you might think.

First, you’ll need to go into control panel, then double click on the Folder Options icon, which you can find in the Home view by clicking on the Appearance and Personalization icon and then clicking on Show Hidden Files or Folders. In the Classic view, Folder Options is just in alphabetical order, and you’ll click on it, then click the View tab.

Once you’ve selected the radio button for Show hidden files and folders and removed the check marks from Hide extensions for known file types and Hide protected operating system files, your screen will look like this:

It’s crucial that you take this step, because otherwise the file may not turn up when you go on to look for it.

Next, you’ll find the Temporary Internet Files folder by either opening Windows Explorer or by clicking “Computer” in the righthand list with a gray background that pops up when you click the Windows flag button at the bottom lefthand of your computer. Then copy and paste this string of words, C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5, into the long white bar almost at the very top of the window, stretching from almost the far left corner to past the middle of the Windows Explorer window. (If you’ve substituted your own name for “Owner” on your computer, and let’s say your name is June, then the string of words will be C:\Users\June\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5. And if you’re using Outlook in Vista, the folder name will be C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\ ) Then press the enter key. Doing this will bring up a bunch of folders with random strings of letters and numbers, like E0CNFY8N.

The screen will look pretty much like this:

Your saved attachment is in one of these folders. You can find the attachment by opening up each folder and then scrolling through the list of files within the folder. The majority of these files will be tiny and many of them will be small graphics and images from your Internet browsing history. The easiest and fastest way to see if the file you need to find is in the folder is by sorting the files by their name, size, date modified, or type. For example, let’s say I worked on a big Word attachment called Third Quarter Report on August 28, saved it very early that day, and was trying to find it on September 3. If I clicked “Size” to sort the files by size, starting at the top with the biggest files, my file would be either at the top or very close to it. If I clicked “Name” to sort the files by name, from A to Z, I would have to scroll down to almost the end of the list before I saw “Third Quarter Report” after the files starting with “S.” If I clicked “Type” to sort the files by type, I would find my file listed as a Microsoft Office Word file, before the file types like Rich Text Format that start with an N or later in the alphabet, and after the file types like JPEG Image that start with an L or earlier in the alphabet. If I clicked “Date modified” to sort the files by the day on which they were last changed, I would find the file under 8/28/2008 3:03 A.M. let’s say, after scrolling a little ways down the list of files. It would come between the 8/27/2007 files and the 8/29/2008 files.

Using this strategy to find your file shouldn’t take very long, but if you’re faced with combing through a huge number of folders within the C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5 folder, you might want to use another strategy. This involves using the Command Prompt. If you’re familiar with DOS and other old operating systems that used the blinking cursor on a black screen, you’ll recognize Command Prompt, because that screen is exactly what pops up when you go into Command Prompt. To start the process, click the Start button, then, in the Search box at the bottom of the menu that pops up, type Command Prompt. That will bring up a list of results, including Command Prompt.

Double-click that, and the black screen with a blinking cursor to the right of C: will pop up:

As you can see, some other words will follow “C:” but you don’t have to worry about them: the important thing is that you reached the “C prompt,” as it’s called. If you want to get to just the basic C:\ prompt, type CD\, press enter, and that will get to you C:\. If you’re intimidated by all this, don’t worry. It’ll take just a couple minutes to find the file, let’s call it Third Quarter Report again to make it easy. And you won’t hurt your computer in the process.

So you’re at “C:” aka “C Prompt.” To find the Third Quarter Report file, type this exact phrase at the prompt: dir Third Quarter Report*.* /s

It’ll take your computer a couple minutes to churn out a list of the files that come up, and one of them should be something like this:

Directory of C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\PCQ2T12Z

8/28/2008 3:03 A.M            500,420 Third Quarter Report.doc

1 File(s)            500,420 bytes

You can also find your file by typing just this at the prompt:

dir Third*.* /s

If you do this, Windows will find all the files that start with “Third,” including, let’s say, Third base.jpg, Third Quarter Report.doc, and Third.gif. So this search will turn up more files, but one of them will be your Third Quarter Report.doc file, and it will look the same in the list of results:

Directory of C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\PCQ2T12Z

8/28/2008 3:03 A.M            500,420 Third Quarter Report.doc

1 File(s)            500,420 bytes

So now that you know which folder your file’s in, you’ll just need to go to the PCQ2T12Z folder of your Content.IE5 folder and pick your Third Quarter Report file out of the folder using one of the Date modified/Type/Name/Size techniques described above. You’ve got your file and your hours of work have not been lost.

If you’re not trying to find your attachment right now, it’s probably a good idea to try one or both of these finding techniques described above with a sample attached file so you’ll know how to do it before that late night when you’re scrambling to unearth the crucial file attachment you saved without remembering to use “save as” to put your attachment in My Documents or some other folder. Also, if these techniques haven’t worked yet, check out the comments and the p.s. message below for some other tips.

P.S.: I noticed that someone tried to find their lost attachment in Explorer by pasting the “Content.IE5″ location in there, and nothing happened, so instead they tried to paste the file location into web browsers, and eventually pasting it into the Google Chrome browser worked. So that could be a good second way of finding the file. Also, a new comment says that if you haven’t found the Content.IE5 folder, you should put “Low” between Temporary Internet Files and Content.IE5, like this: Temporary Internet Files\Low\Content.IE5

By the way, if you’re using XP or have Outlook or Outlook Express on your Vista machine, you can use a strategy very similar to these two described above to find your hidden, saved attachment from an Outlook or Outlook Express message as well.  You’ll also need to set the Folder Options/View tab to show hidden and system files, and you’ll also need to either do the C: file search or go to the c:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files folder in Windows Explorer to retrieve your file. This page gives a fuller explanation for how the process works with Outlook or Outlook Express. This page provides an alternate explanation with some screen shots to help guide you through the process. And, this page provides yet another technique if you’re using Outlook and Office. Going to one or all three of the pages should get you the full information about finding your missing file in Outlook or Outlook Express.

I don’t know if you need to go through the process described above to find hidden attachments in Windows 7 as well as Vista and XP. I’d bet that you do, because if they didn’t fix it in Vista, they probably didn’t fix it in 7. But if you’re a 7 user who’s come here looking for your attachment, please let me know, and please also drop a note saying whether the process worked.

In closing, if you’ve saved time and/or money by finding your file through the above guide, feel free to send a few dollars my way as a thank you by using the donation button up at the top right. Or, you can just buy the above guide as an e-book/pdf file for $6, at Lulu.com. It’s a safeguard against losing an attachment again and either being offline or forgetting where this blog is when trying to find your attachment, as well as a tip in exchange for getting the above information.