Have I lost my Google spreadsheet for good?

Do you ever view it on other devices (phone/tablet)?  I'd be tempted to turn off mobile data and wifi and open Google Docs on there to see if there's a cached version.  It's a long shot, but worth a try.

Have you tried contacting Google Support?

A few websites suggesting you can ask them if they can retrieve the file for you. I've not tried it, so no idea how successful this is:

Article here:
https://tech.yahoo.com/general/articles/recover-deleted-files-google-drive-210012249.html

Long shot, but do you have more than one Google account and you are inadvertently logged on to a different one?

I would be amazed if there's a cached version anywhere I'm afraid.  Just looked in my trash and there's files in there that I deleted a couple of weeks ago.
A spreadsheet is going to be tiny compared to even the smallest of videos and I very much doubt it would have been culled along with "large photo's".

Hopefully support can help.

my wife has viewed it before on her chromebook, but ive just tried the 'turn off data and wifi' trick but still no joy, still deleted.

i do have more than one account, but im on the correct one, and the fact that its deleted for my wife too suggests its gone.

i'll try support.

thank you.

thank you thank you thank you.  support has turned up trumps.  had to wait for an email which prompted me to sign in to see any recovered files, and it was in there.

strangely its in .xlsx format when all the others are normal sheets, no idea why, but the important thing is i can see it.  ive downloaded it for safety and also made a copy.

thank you all again

Good result! So the support thing works (at least in some cases). Good to know.

Wow, that's impressive...

6:22 calls support 

6:45 updates thread to tell us it's sorted!

Which suggests some automated process as a lot of people do this so good to know it's possible, and quick!

Don't know if it applies but if you open Google sheets on windows you can see a document history of the file.

You can't do this in the app on Android etc.

Don't know if it applies but if you open Google sheets on windows you can see a document history of the file.

You can't do this in the app on Android etc.

Spare a thought for this guy.

https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/windows-11-user-has-30-years-of-irreplaceable-photos-and-work-locked-away-in-onedrive-and-microsofts-silence-is-deafening

Re: that Microsoft story. Unless I'm missing something, that user HASN'T lost their data - it still sits on the old hard drives (unless they've done something REALLY stupid like format the old hard drives before validating the data transfer...) 🤷

Posted by: sadexpunk

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strangely its in .xlsx format when all the others are normal sheets,

.xlsx is a normal sheet, it's an open format which replaced .xls like 15-20 years ago.  What were you expecting instead?

Posted by: Cougar

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.xlsx is a normal sheet, it's an open format which replaced .xls like 15-20 years ago.  What were you expecting instead?

In Google Sheets, there is no file suffix unless you export it to a different format. Most of my Sheets are thus un-suffixed.

In Google Sheets there is (AFAIK) a file suffix unless the extension is being hidden, which isn't entirely unlikely.  With any Windows file, the extension identifies (not always correctly) the file type to the OS.  Google Sheets uses .sheets or some such IIRC, whereas Excel is .xls or xlsx.  So if you're going File/Open in one application to look for a file created in the other, I wouldn't necessarily expect consistent behaviour.  If I go to to a Sheets file on Google Drive and create a local copy, it generates an .xlsx file.

Compare Linux (and I assume Mac also) where the file extension is purely cosmetic.

Sure, if you've set up Google Drive in the Windows file system and look at Properties, there is a .gsheet file suffix. However, that is not shown when you open Google Sheets. What's more, any .xlsx file saved in Google Drive shows .xlsx as the file suffix without having to open the Properties tab, so the suffixes are handled quite differently. The point is, if the OP is only using Sheets through their browser (as would appear to be the case) then they won't see any .gsheet file suffix. 

You're probably correct.

Point was, using an application to open a file will (by default, generally) only show files it understands; whereas using a file browser to open a file will show you all the files regardless of whether or not you've got an app installed which is capable of opening them.

Posted by: PJay

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Spare a thought for this guy.

Yeah, Bill Gates and the crew at MS are probably sitting around going through his vacation photos having a good laugh at how lame he is.

yes, as a few of you have mentioned, i was surprised because i know that .xlsx is a dedicated excel sheet, but i dont have excel/office on my laptop, if i create a small spreadsheet to help me organise my life its in google sheets.

i have around 5 or 6 such sheets, this 'Money' sheet being one of them and i always open it through 'sheets'.  usually its good enough to just start typing the name in the address bar and itll finish the title off for me, i hit return and it opens.  this time i did so and it said the file had been deleted, so it was an address that i always use and was in my cache/history, its just the file wasnt there any more.

now that its recovered, i look at my spreadsheets, theyre all 'google sheets' with no file extension apart from this one thats .xlsx.  ive no idea how it became xlsx or why its different from the others, or why it became deleted.

i suppose it doesnt matter, im happy (very happy) ive got it back, and google sheets opens xlsx files so i dont really need to know why or how it happened.  

thank you