Thanks for the advice.

One other reason for having the data on a small USB device was so that I
could on occasion go to meetings without my laptop and access data by
plugging it in to a pc at the meeting. Should I assume that the data could
be retrieved from that pc after I have left? Which would be a cause for
concern also.

"William Anderson" wrote in
message ...
For more information on the Encryption File System (EFS) go to
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...y/cryptfs.mspx

Best Regards,

~Will

"LVTravel" wrote:

While the data is important to recover and BobI has helped all there is
right now, if the USB drive is unencrypted, I would be contacting the
companies where any of these passwords, account information is used and
start changing that information also. You have given someone who finds
this
drive valuable information to start stealing your identity. Hope it was
encrypted or at least password protected.


"Bob I" wrote in message
...
Possibly the AutoRecover file IF you had that feature turned on and it
is
still not over written, You would need to look in Excel to see where
its
stored for your particular setup default is C:\Documents and
Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Excel\

Tony wrote:
I keep a lot of my confidential bank details, bank balances,
passwords,
customer account details, etc stored on a USB storage device. I prefer
not to keep them stored on my laptop for security reasons but
ironically
I have lost my USB device and I fear I am going to have to make a good
many calls and letters to retrieve this information.



On my laptop I edited the excel file, that contains my data, only
hours
before losing it. Does a pc keep a temporary copy of the file that I
could retrieve?



I would happily buy some un-delete software if the data can be
retrieved.
I have made a point of not using the pc since knowing the USB device
has
been lost so as not to possibly overwrite any temporary information.



Thank you