How do I find lost contents of file in Word?

P

PhilJ

I was tyoing on a long project in Word 2003 when suddenly, for no apparent
reason, the contents of the file vanished. That is, I was still in the same
Word file, but the document was blank. The shell of the file still exists,
but the contents are gone. I did a file search, but no luck. Where did my
file go, and how can I get it back?
 
H

Herb Tyson [MVP]

If the file is still open, I'd try pressing Ctrl+Z to see if it comes back.
The only thing I can think of that would make it suddenly disappear would be
if you accidentally pressed Ctrl+A (select all), then typed a space, pressed
Enter, etc. But, pressing Ctrl+Z would undo that kind of mistake,
resurrecting the accidentally-deleted text.

If you didn't save the now-empty file, the last-saved version should still
be on disk. If you have backups turned on (tools - options - save, always
create backup copy), then Backup of {filename}.wbk should be there, as well.
 
P

PhilJ

Thanks - that's good info to have. But in this case, the now-empty file had
been closed, so the ctrl-z thing doesn't work. And naturally, I did not have
the auto backup feature on. (I do now, though.)
 
T

TF

Phil

As Herb suggested, the usual reason for this is the accidental pressing of
Ctrl+A when probably typing a Capital A (Shift+A). The next character typed
replaces the whole document - which can be pretty dramatic to the user!
 
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