You typed out 12 pages of a document and never bothered to take a
moment to save your work as you were working along?
Well...the first thing you'll want to do is slap yourself for not
saving along the way. You were just ASKING for trouble.
There are two types of computer users...those who save often...and
those who wished they did.
If the doc crashed and you never saved...you may have to kiss your
work goodbye and see this as a learning experience so you don't shoot
yourself in the foot this way in the future.
If you're lucky enough to be using a more recent version of Word...it
may have attempted to save some of your work for you. Right click the
Windows Task Bar and choose Task Manager. Click the Application tab to
see if Word has stopped responding. If so, click Stop Process. This
WILL crash the program. Then reopen Word. If you're using Word
2003...you should get a recovery and NOW you can save your document.
With luck...much of it will be recovered for you.
If you are using an older version...have fun recreating your work!
Also...after you have recovered the doc...you should remove the
remaining crash files that may be piling up on your system to avoid
crashing in the future. But WAIT until you reopen Word to see if the
system can attempt to recover before you trash all the old crash
files...since the system may be able to use that info to recover. If
it doesn't after you reopen...you can get rid of them because they're
most likely useless (or move them off to another folder if you want to
wait to be sure they're not helpful.)
See this link for more details...
Maintaining Your Computer
http://www.mousetrax.com/maintain.html
Dian D. Chapman, Technical Consultant
Microsoft MVP, MOS Certified
Editor/TechTrax Ezine
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