How to recover lost .tex files

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You can go back to your old computer and copy them to your external hard drive but try and change their extension from .tex to .txt in case they appear that way. Don't do that in the originals but in copies. There wouldn't be any problem but just in case. As it is already mentioned in the comments .tex files are simple text files.

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Neil
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Neil

Updated on May 13, 2020

Comments

  • Neil
    Neil over 3 years

    Initial position

    I recently bought a new computer, and I thought I have backed up all of my LaTeX files and documents from my old computer onto an external hard drive. Upon searching for old LaTeX documents in the external drive, I noticed that all of them were only available in PDF form (there were no .tex files anymore).

    Question

    How can I recover or reconstruct these lost .tex files?

    • bodo
      bodo over 9 years
      Turn on your old computer and copy the .tex files to the external hard drive as well.
    • Neil
      Neil over 9 years
      That's what I did to begin with. But when I plug the external drive into the new computer, the tex files disappear.
    • David Carlisle
      David Carlisle over 9 years
      This question isn't really related to TeX (so is off topic for this site) tex files are just standard text files so copying them does not require any special tex application, it is just a matter of operating system use, as for any file. So you would need to ask on a forum for the operating system (you don't say which you are using).
    • Martin Schröder
      Martin Schröder over 9 years
      possible duplicate of How to convert PDF to (La)TeX?
    • Willem Van Onsem
      Willem Van Onsem over 9 years
      Furthermore some advice: use LaTeX with a subversioning system like git. You can then push your files to a free git hosting service like github.
    • texenthusiast
      texenthusiast over 9 years
      Welcome to TeX.SX ! may be install the same TeX editor (that you used on Old computer ) on new computer so that it may detect the .tex files with small icon. Usually any .tex files can also be opened with simple notepad editor to verify if you have \documentclass{} inside.