The Word doc I have been writting is now EMPTY!!!

[Ahmed]

I have been writting a report for the past week, and have always saved my
file regularly (every 10 minutes). My computer froze (while I was typing)
yesterday and when I rebooted I tried to open my file, but all that I could
see was a bunch of wierd characters and my name repeated twice; the rest of
the document (all 5 pages of it) was blank!!! NO Autorecovery task pane
opened (which is what surprises me) and I have no idea where my writting has
gone. To make things even worse, the file is now only 4kB big, instead of the
30 or so it was when I was writting! Anyone have any suggestions; I cannot
believe that Word 2003 has no failsafe for my files. This was a very intesive
writing project, if anyone can help it would be much appretiated!

 

[garfield-n-odie]

See "How to recover a lost file" in:
Word 2003: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=827099
Word 2002: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316951
Word 2000: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316950

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I would suspect that what you opened was the "owner file" (~$<filename>.doc)
rather than the file itself.

 

[Ahmed]

I saved the file on the desktop, and clicked on the file I have been always
clicking on. That is the problem: it looks exactly the same, except the size
is very incorrect and none of my text is there. Why did my text disappear
when I have saved this file well over 3 dozen times?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Proving once again that the desktop is not a very good place to save files.
When you save to the desktop, all the temp files Word creates (including the
owner file) will also be saved there. Very likely you have more than one
Word file on the desktop now.