Please help me recover my file and work!

L

Leafgreen

I was working on a 40 page, 65,000 character Word 2003 document. It had a lot
of cross references to numbers. I pressed ctrl-A then ctrl-F9 to update the
references. Then it looked like Word did nothing. I couldn't de-select
anything. I closed out the document. I'm not sure if Word asked me to save
changes, and I save constantly.

So I quit Word and re-opened the document. At the bottom of the window, it
says the doc. contains ~65,000 characters, but it shows a blank page, and 1/1
pages. The cursor and end of document bar is in the upper left hand corner of
the page.

I checked to view all hidden characters. Same blank window. I restarted the
PC and re-opened the doc. Same blank window. I did the Open and Repair from
within Word, and get the same blank window.

In the Windows file list, the document shows 588kb, so there's a lot of data
in the file...somewhere!!!

My last backup is before several hours of work. Please help.
TIA!
Leafgreen
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

I'm guessing that you pressed Ctrl+A and then some character (even the
spacebar), which would have overwritten the selected text. At this point,
obviously, Undo was the panic button you should have pressed rather than
Close, but I suspect if you'd just waited instead of closing you might have
had better luck as well. I hate to say it, but I think your last backup is
your best bet now.
 
L

Leafgreen

Hi Suzanne and Thank you for your reply, but I don't think that's what
happened (pressed the space bar or character) because the document is still
about a half a megabyte in size, and Word says it contains ~65K characters.
 
M

Michael Bednarek

I was working on a 40 page, 65,000 character Word 2003 document. It had a lot
of cross references to numbers. I pressed ctrl-A then ctrl-F9 to update the
references. Then it looked like Word did nothing. I couldn't de-select
anything. I closed out the document. I'm not sure if Word asked me to save
changes, and I save constantly.

So I quit Word and re-opened the document. At the bottom of the window, it
says the doc. contains ~65,000 characters, but it shows a blank page, and 1/1
pages. The cursor and end of document bar is in the upper left hand corner of
the page.

I checked to view all hidden characters. Same blank window. I restarted the
PC and re-opened the doc. Same blank window. I did the Open and Repair from
within Word, and get the same blank window.

In the Windows file list, the document shows 588kb, so there's a lot of data
in the file...somewhere!!!

My last backup is before several hours of work. Please help.
Click to expand...

Does this document use "Versions", either automatically or manually?

Have you tried to open a copy of the document with "Recover Text from
Any File"? Even if that works, it won't recover any formatting, only
text.
 
L

Leafgreen

Hi Michael,
Yes, after posting here, I did some more research and saw this method. I did
it and now plan to merge and compare the backup with the text. Not a bad
option, but not a full recovery which would be better.
 
T

Terry Farrell

Perhaps fonts are all formatted WHITE? Try Ctrl+A and Format, Font selecting
Auto and see what happens.
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

I thought of that, too, Terry, but if the end-of-document marker is at the
top of page 1, then this is unlikely.
 
T

Terry Farrell

Ah! I think I have spotted the problem. Ctrl+A will select all the document
but Crtl+F9 doesn't Update References (that's just F9): it inserts an empty
pair of field braces. I think the whole document has been entered into a
field and the field result is displayed - which is nothing.

Try opening the documents, using Ctrl+A and then Ctrl+F9 to see if toggling
on display field reveals the contents again. If it does, select the contents
from inside the field braces and paste outside the braces. Then delete the
field braces and save.

Terry
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

Ah, indeed--good catch! I knew there was something about Ctrl+F9 that made
me feel funny. <g>
 
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