So I’m typing my current chapter set, and I’m almost done, 27 pages, over 11,000 words–and suddenly the whole blamed thing disappears! Back to “Page 1 of 1, 0 words.”
Where is my work????? How can I get it back? I was just typing away and there it went, gone, vanished, off to see the fairies. When I search for the document, all I get is this blank page.
Anybody out there who can help? Like, before my head explodes! Help!!!!
Jeez.. and you didn’t hit save at least one time in 27 pages??? I had some level of respect for you until now. 😛
If you typed it all in MSWord… there might be an out for you. Do a search on recovering lost MSWord files and there’s a few places on your PC you might check as Word does do a kind of interim backup. Unless you’ve already done all that.. and this is the end.
It has taken me a week to get this far, and I Save at the end of each day’s work so I can pick up where I left off.
Eeek! Did you accidentally highlight everything and hit delete? If so the undo button would bring it back. Is the file already saved with a name somewhere? Hard to troubleshoot without being able to see your screen. 🙁
Would like to help though. I know I would be panicking at the thought of losing 27 pages!
I am told the work still exists somewhere in the bowels of the hard drive. Doesn’t do me much good.
It’s a good idea to save every time you pause. As soon as you have the file named, just hit CTRL S and that saves your changes.
I’m not sure where Word saves its temp files, but you might a fallback somewhere by virtue of that. Applications are not my strength, I’m a network guy, but above the network level, I’m pretty close to helpless.
Been there, done that! I agree with Unknowable, always save as you go along (make it a hard, fast habit). We know your work is still in your computer, but only an expert or a hacker can probably retrieve it. My heart bleeds for you, brother. I don’t know it hitting your head against the wall real hard a few times will help.
As with most computer problems, the answer will prove easy to implement, but it may take a fair amount of effort to find the answer in the first place.
If you haven’t closed the word processor or saved the file since the loss, you might be able to retrieve it by hitting CTRL Z. If you are past that point, try looking in recent documents in the Word Processor’s “File” menu.
Whatever you do, don’t shut off your computer until your tech arrives.
Now he tells me…
When we have computer problems, our first reaction is to do SOMETHING, so we do, and usually that seals the fate of whatever happened. It’s true for myself, and for a lot of other people as well. Usually, the best thing to do is nothing, just wait and try to think through what happened.
In this case, it may well be that the entire document was highlighted accidentally and the delete key pressed. If that happens, stop and hit CTRL Z, which undoes the last change made to the document. However, that only works until the next time the document is saved.
If you go to the file menu of the word processor and look under “Info”, you may see a place where you can “Manage Versions” of the file. If you see that. click it and up should pop “Recover Unsaved Documents”. With luck that might be all it takes.
The IT guy has tried those–and come up empty. My work has simply vanished. Even if I do it all over again, which looks likely, it can never be an exact duplicate of what I’ve lost.
That’s a real shame, Lee. I’ve had similar things happen, although I can’t rival 27 pages of loss.
At the end of each day’s work, I Save it. Not that it did me any good.