Recovering Lost Word Documents

[Lazy Sod]

Mrs LS spent all afternoon writing her monthly nature column for our parish magazine, in the free version of Word, on our Windows 10 desktop. She opened a new document, clicked 'save as' and called it Nature Notes June for July 2021, her normal procedure, and typed her article, hitting save as she went.

I was out so she left it on the screen for me to look at before she emailed it to the magazine editor. I returned and, as normal, the computer had gone to sleep. I woke it up with a press of the space bar and the document came up as a blank page. Searching Nature Notes June for July 2021 just opens a blank page. It's as though she never saved it at all, which did.

Letting the PC go to sleep on it's own shouldn't loose what was on the screen, should it? I've searched all I can but can't it. Help.

 

[rollestonpark]

maybe somehow the whole of the doc was highlighted and when you pressed space it wiped it out...
although I'd be surprised if that had happened.
I take it you looked on the recent documents list, and loaded it from there did you?
Not much help now, but you might want to consider trying google docs, it's free, cloud based and saves as you type.
Definitely worth a try.
I do a lot of my docs/spreadsheets there now.

 

[Nort o the Galt]

maybe somehow the whole of the doc was highlighted and when you pressed space it wiped it out...
although I'd be surprised if that had happened.
I take it you looked on the recent documents list, and loaded it from there did you?
Not much help now, but you might want to consider trying google docs, it's free, cloud based and saves as you type.
Definitely worth a try.
I do a lot of my docs/spreadsheets there now.

Sometimes pressing control and z at the same time undos your last action!

 

[badger nadgers]

Don't know about the "free version of Word" but in Word 2010 there is a "recover unsaved documents" option under File Tab / Recent at the bottom of the Recent Places list. ISTR it relies on automatic background saves.

It does sound like you've replaced the content with a space and possibly saved on top of it.

 

[Lazy Sod]

The free version doesn't have that, nor did it have any of the solutions offered when I googled the problem. She typed it again and all was ok. Having had a somewhat similar problem with our previous word processing program, her normal procedure is to print out the finished article before she saves it so that it could be scanned back into the computer. For some reason she forgot to do it this time. She will next time.

 

[Ukjay]

@Lazy Sod

If she is certain that she had been saving as she went along, open word - a blank document, then follow the same actions as she would have taken for said lost documents - then when you click save as - before you type anything into the name column, look to see where it is defaulting the save to option.
You should then be able to locate the file from that destination folder hopefully?

 

[Netherfield]

Or you could have tried a search for *.docx or *.doc

 

[JP1]

Did you lose supper and entitlements as a result of that inadvisable space bar tap ?

 

[Lazy Sod]

Thanks. I'll try it.

 

[Lazy Sod]

No we didn't, she had to do it again. Now, as well as saving it, which has always worked since, she prints it out so we could always scan it back in if necessary. I'll make a note of the above though. Thanks.

 

[Cowabunga]

No we didn't, she had to do it again. Now, as well as saving it, which has always worked since, she prints it out so we could always scan it back in if necessary. I'll make a note of the above though. Thanks.

You may still find it saved to some obscure folder one day. When you initially ‘save as’, which should be done ASAP or even before you add content, the recipient folder should be specified. Just ‘save’ subsequently saves the same amended document to the same destination and name as ‘saved as’.