Help.....Overwritten Wordpad document!

[Chad]

This problem occurred on Saturday, Sept 9th at 3am.I have a regular Microsoft
wordpad (Version 5.1). There was a document that is under my constant use and
for some reason when I was shutting it down, like a third of what I had down
wasn't there. I tried opening it back up and I then noticed that this program
deleted almost 98% of the text for absolutely no reason at all. And I am
going out of my mind right now trying to figure out why this happened. Now,
for some reason or another, the *original document is now overwritten by this
scant remaining 2% that I am now left with. The remainder of this specific
file still bears its original title called "words". I tried looking all over
my hard drive for it. But all that comes up is all but what was saved over
the original document. I downloaded several pathetic "Recovery programs" via
the web but none of them helped me at all.

I would greatly appreciate anyones advice, assistance and input in this.
Thanks,
Chad

 

[Clive Huggan]

Hello Chad,

Unfortunately you have posted this in the newsgroup for Mac versions of
Word, and we don't have Wordpad on the Mac platform. It's possible that one
of the people who operate on both Mac and Windows may come along and answer
your query, but you are probably better off posting in one of the several
newsgroups dedicated to Word on the PC.

Cheers,
Clive Huggan
=============

 

[Chad]

Clive,
Thanks for telling me.... I blame this on Microsoft because they advised me
that since I am not eligible for help from a Microsoft rep, I have to use
these "self-help" options. And they gave me terrible directions to these
forums and which is why I am posting here.
If you know the correct website for me to post in, could you hyperlink it
for me?
Thanks,
Chad

 

[Clive Huggan]

That's why people come here, Chad!

Have a look at http://word.mvps.org/ , which you should find interesting;
then under the heading "Posting to the newsgroups" click on "here", which
will take you to a "Find Help" page; then when you click "Which newsgroup
should you post to?" you'll go to a useful page --
www.word.mvps.org/FindHelp/WhichNewgrp.htm

For questions about Word, the names of all of the groups you want begin with
"microsoft.public.word...". There are lots, and off the top of my head
(since I don't use Wordpad on my PC) I don't know which will be best; but I
bet there will be several that you can try, any one of which will give an
answer.

If you want to visit regularly to upgrade your skills, you'll find it best
to use newsreader access to the newsgroups (inc via Outlook), as discussed
at www.word.mvps.org/FindHelp/WhichNewgrp.htm

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Chad:

Well, I can give you the answer, but you won't like it any better than the
one you already have

"WordPad" was never designed for production use. It's actually a
polished-up version of Word 2 for Windows (very old...).

Every now and again, it will corrupt its documents and lose text,
particularly if the document gets to a reasonable size.

When it does lose the text, two things have happened: either the file on the
disk has become corrupted so it can't read it, or the text in memory has
become corrupted.

Either way, if you save, the text that was visible at the time is all that
remains. In WordPad, it's nowhere else on the disk, WordPad always edits
the original file.

So: I am sorry, this file is "gone". You will have to restore the file from
your backup. If you do not HAVE a backup, you just learned the most painful
lesson in computing: the hard way.

It hurts...

For the future, please remember that a computer is simply a mechanical
device. The only thing you can say for *certain* is that SOMEDAY, it will
fail. And when a computer fails, you do not usually lose "only some" of the
information. Usually, you lose ALL of it.

Search the Internet for Backup suggestions, and adopt one of them. The one
I use is that I save important files as a new version each time I change
them, and I save them to two different hard drives.

A friend and I have the same model backup drive. Once every week or so, we
swap drives. That way if my computer, or hers, gets stolen, we each have a
copy of all our important data.

Hope this helps

Clive,
Thanks for telling me.... I blame this on Microsoft because they advised me
that since I am not eligible for help from a Microsoft rep, I have to use
these "self-help" options. And they gave me terrible directions to these
forums and which is why I am posting here.
If you know the correct website for me to post in, could you hyperlink it
for me?
Thanks,
Chad

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410