Outline Revisions Lost

[Jason McClain]

I am having the experience of opening a word doc that I have been working
out of in outline view and having the last few things I added to it not be
there. As if I am opening a previous version of it. This has happened
several times with no noticeable pattern or conditions under which it
occurs.
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Any IDEAs?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Is the text actually gone, or is it just not showing up in outline view, but
it's still there if you go into Normal View?

What version of Word and OS?

 

[Jason McClain]

Oops. Can't believe I forgot the version and system particulars.

OS 10.3.8 [the latest "Panther" release] with all updates installed
MS Office v.X 10.1.6 [latest update/service pack installed]

--

And yes, it is actually gone, regardless of the view. The heading of the
outline item is there, but it has nothing below it. 500 words have
disappeared. And again, I am clear it is a previous version. It looks like a
recent save I did. Maybe 5 or 6 saves ago. Really weird regression. This is
a working doc I use for writing ideas.

Today I have disabled fast saves, thinking this may be the culprit and
enabled "always save a backup copy"--although I had a backup copy manually
backed up to an external drive daily, and it lacks the same data as the doc
in question. Although, the source doc was "fast saved".

It is just frustrating as an almost complete OpEd is gone. Ironically
enough, the outline view and functionality is one of the sole reasons I use
Word. If it continues to prove unpredictable, I will not hesitate to switch
to Nisus Writer or some other such app.

 

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

Hi Jason:

Check that you have the Outline Level property set correctly in the styles
you are using in Outline View. Outline View swings off the Outline Level
property, not the style name.

In Outline view you need to be careful: as you well know, it's a power tool.
A slip of the finger to delete a heading will take out all of the words
below it down to the next same-level heading. You already know that...

Check in Tools>Autocorrect>Automatically as you Type that you have
everything in the bottom two sections of the dialog turned OFF: they play
havoc with Outline View.

Outline View is "not" flaky, in my experience. However, scratchpad
documents subjected to frequent hacking and chopping can become so over
time. It doesn't hurt to save them out "as a Web Page", then open the Web
Page version and re-save as a new Word document every now and again, just to
clean them out. Maybe once a month or so, for heavily edited documents.

Hope this helps

--

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. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

Oops. Can't believe I forgot the version and system particulars.

OS 10.3.8 [the latest "Panther" release] with all updates installed
MS Office v.X 10.1.6 [latest update/service pack installed]

--

And yes, it is actually gone, regardless of the view. The heading of the
outline item is there, but it has nothing below it. 500 words have
disappeared. And again, I am clear it is a previous version. It looks like
a
recent save I did. Maybe 5 or 6 saves ago. Really weird regression. This
is
a working doc I use for writing ideas.

Today I have disabled fast saves, thinking this may be the culprit and
enabled "always save a backup copy"--although I had a backup copy manually
backed up to an external drive daily, and it lacks the same data as the
doc
in question. Although, the source doc was "fast saved".

It is just frustrating as an almost complete OpEd is gone. Ironically
enough, the outline view and functionality is one of the sole reasons I
use
Word. If it continues to prove unpredictable, I will not hesitate to
switch
to Nisus Writer or some other such app.

Is the text actually gone, or is it just not showing up in outline view,
but
it's still there if you go into Normal View?

What version of Word and OS?

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Jason,

Unless John has something else in mind than "uncorrupting" your document,
then saving out to a web page is *not* the primary method recommended for
Word X (though it is for Word 2004). The procedure you should use is to
copy all but the very last paragraph mark in your document and paste into a
blank new Word doc. For more, see here:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/DocumentCorruption.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice; better yet, use another
browser.)

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice ­ or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>