I hate Microsoft word.

[katster]

I was writing my final report in word. I was doing pretty good. Had fifteen pages, was cruising towards *done* and...well...I hate word. Here's what happened.

Since this is a final report, it's dependent on a lot of other things I was doing. They're all saved with the class number in front, so I can find them easily. Since I'm getting close to the end, I decide, well, I don't need a couple of the other documents open anymore. I went to close them.
I hit the wrong button [The big red X in word, not the little X to close the document.) I compounded my error when it asked 'Would you like to save 208 Final Report', I thought it was asking about a different document (I had just been tinkering and was attempting to close '208 Progress Report') and hit no before I realized which document it was asking me about.

So three or four hours of work gone because I was an idiot.

Did I mention it's due tomorrow?

Will somebody please shoot me now and put me out of my misery?

Comments

[netdancer.livejournal.com]

Word autosaves. You may have all your work but the bit since the last autosave.

******
Subject: Word - Safety Tips
Keywords: word, tips

Word Safety Tips

Word has two systems to protect you against the accidental loss of your work:
- Always Keep Backup
- Autosave every 10 minutes

Of course - saving your work often also helps.

Always Keep Backup Feature

When you save your document - this system renames the existing copy of your document (yourdoc.doc)...
- Word 6 - to 'yourdoc.bak'.
- Word 97 - backup copy of yourdoc.wbk.
...before saving the current version (as yourdoc.doc).

Recovering Backup File

If for any reason you can't open your document (it happens) or you open a document and it freezes, do the following:
1. get out of the frozen document by whatever means necessary & (Win
95/98)close down Windows.
2. (Win 95/98)restart Windows & restart Word.
3. get Word's 'open dialog' looking at the same directory as the dud file.
4. drop the 'Files of type' list and select 'All Files(*.*)' option - see all files including backups.
5. click on the backup file and click on 'Open' button.

Word will then open a slightly out of date copy of your document.
1. re-type the missing text (!)
2. click 'File' menu then 'Save As' option and give it a new name - it is a good idea not to use the same name as the broken file as it might be stored on a broken section of disk.

Autosave Feature

With 'Autosave' switched on, Word saves a copy of your document to a separate file every ten minutes (or however often you specify).

Using Autosave
If your computer freezes & you have to switch the power off - Word will load the Autosave file the next time you run Word. The 'recovered' document will not have the same name as the original so you will have to save & name it again.

[katster.livejournal.com]

Right. But I guess Word cleans up the autosaves when you make the mistake I did (because that's the first thing I did) and I didn't have backup on. It's not set up to do backups automagically.

It's gone.

The only hope I have now is explaning it to my instructors and hoping they'll be merciful.

-kat