Thanks for the tip, it worked! (Windows 7)
The recovery software I used was: Recuva v1.42.544 its free and worked extremely well for me. Small install and easy to use. I just told it too look in the same folder as the corrupt aep file. After “deep scan” Recuva presented me with a list of all previously saved versions of the file(ie the same file but diferent save times). I recovered a few of the files just to make sure.