Recover Pages document previous version?

Question

I made the error I shouldn't .
I made a new document A with Pages which I saved.
Then I started from this docment A to make a completely new one
with the idea to save it later with a new name B.
While working on this document I printed it.
At the same time I was working on some other documents.
Coming back to my Pages document A I noticed the usual
black point within the topleft red button which means there
are modifications pending which is always there whenever you make a print.
To avoid this error prone false warning I got the habit to always
save after a printing. And I did it . Hence I completely overwrote
the previous version of my document A.
This previous version of my document A isn't in Time Machine last backup.
I didn't activate the Pages option
    Back up previous version when saving.
What is the best software or technique to recover the previous version of a Pages document
in such conditions?
dan

Answer 1

Hello
Which Pages version are you using ?
Pages '08 create packages but the default format used by Pages '09 is flatfile which may be revived by recovery tools.
If you are using Pages '08 or Pages '09 under 10.6.8, you may install my Autosave script which keep an archive of works in progress every ten minutes.
With it at work, it would be easy to revive your document.
The tools which you name can't revive the entire structure of a package but sometimes they may retrieve the index.xml.gz file. I wrote "sometimes" because you described the optimistic scheme. In practice the process may reuse some blocks of the original version for the new one.
As far as I know, every Pages's index.xml.gz files start with the same group of bytes :
which may be used to help recovery apps to retrieve them.
If you retrieve the wanted one, looking in it you would retrieve the list of embedded picture files.
With a bit of luck, their original version is available somewhere on your HD.
With this set of files you may rebuild the Pages document.
Here is what I got when I replaced the index.xml.gz file from a newly created document by one borrowed to an other one.
As you see, I got the location of pictures in the file and the list of the picture files.
With that, it's easy to complmete the doc.
It's more annoying if the file embedded charts but, when the lost doc is one which we built, it's not too difficult to restore the charts from the source tables.
Before leaving, I will repeat the tip which I use for years to get rid of what you did.
When I save a Pages document as azerty.pages, I rename it as azerty.template.
This way, when I open it, I get a copy with no risk to destroy the original.
For Numbers doc, I rename qsdfg.numbers as qsdfg.nmbtemplate
Some weeks ago, I posted here a script automating the process. It apply in fact to every kind of docs. For iWork ones, it rename them, for docs issued of other apps, it set their system's attribute "stationary" to true.
Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France)  samedi 12 janvier 2011 12:50:01
iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 4 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2
My iDisk is : <http://public.me.com/koenigyvan>
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