White Screen_Where's The Document?

[Douglas BISHOP]

I got this e-mail from a friend....does this sound familiar? Sounds as if
he inadvertantly switched a setting on his tool bar...I'll try to find out
what version of Word he is using....any ideas?


Hi Doug...
Got a question for ya. I was working in Microsoft word, had several
pages of work which I had saved to the hard drive, then the screen went
white, as if it changed pages. I tried to exit at which it asked if I
wanted to save it or whatever. I said yes, and exited. Now, it seems that
I cannot bring the longgggg document back up. Oh it shows that it exist
with 19.5kb, however it has a blank screen when it is supposedly opened.
Any ideas of how to recover my work?

Thanks, Randy

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Doug,

I have some bad news for Randy...

About 19.5 kB is the size of an empty Word document (yes, there's that
much overhead).

Admittedly it isn't obvious, but when the screen went white, saving
and exiting was the worst possible move. The correct response would
have been to hit the Undo button (even after saving, but before
exiting).

What I suspect happened was that Randy inadvertently pressed Ctrl+A
(select all) and then pressed the spacebar or the Delete or Backspace
key. That immediately wiped out the whole document. Having saved and
exited, there's nothing left. If there's no backup copy, it's
permanently gone.

On the off chance that "Automatically save backup" was checked in
Tools > Options > Save, tell Randy to look in the same folder for a
file named "Backup of <doc name>.wbk". If it's there, he can rename it
as a .doc file and continue. If not, tell him to check that option to
make recovery from future disasters a little easier.

 

[TF]

One of the problems of Ctrl+A and Ctrl+S being so close!



: Hi Doug,
:
: I have some bad news for Randy...
:
: About 19.5 kB is the size of an empty Word document (yes, there's that
: much overhead).
:
: Admittedly it isn't obvious, but when the screen went white, saving
: and exiting was the worst possible move. The correct response would
: have been to hit the Undo button (even after saving, but before
: exiting).
:
: What I suspect happened was that Randy inadvertently pressed Ctrl+A
: (select all) and then pressed the spacebar or the Delete or Backspace
: key. That immediately wiped out the whole document. Having saved and
: exited, there's nothing left. If there's no backup copy, it's
: permanently gone.
:
: On the off chance that "Automatically save backup" was checked in
: Tools > Options > Save, tell Randy to look in the same folder for a
: file named "Backup of <doc name>.wbk". If it's there, he can rename it
: as a .doc file and continue. If not, tell him to check that option to
: make recovery from future disasters a little easier.
:
: --
: Regards,
: Jay Freedman
: Microsoft Word MVP
:
: On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 03:10:32 -0500, "Douglas BISHOP"
:
: >I got this e-mail from a friend....does this sound familiar? Sounds as
if
: >he inadvertantly switched a setting on his tool bar...I'll try to find
out
: >what version of Word he is using....any ideas?
: >
: >
: >Hi Doug...
: > Got a question for ya. I was working in Microsoft word, had several
: >pages of work which I had saved to the hard drive, then the screen went
: >white, as if it changed pages. I tried to exit at which it asked if I
: >wanted to save it or whatever. I said yes, and exited. Now, it seems
that
: >I cannot bring the longgggg document back up. Oh it shows that it exist
: >with 19.5kb, however it has a blank screen when it is supposedly opened.
: >Any ideas of how to recover my work?
: >
: > Thanks, Randy
: >
: