for Jan. 14, 2004

Hi, All;

This week: I lost my document - what happened and how can I get it back?

I got a call last week from a client working on a multi-page document that suddenly disappeared and had only the word "gain" showing on a single page of the document! What had happened? Microsoft has put in all of their programs "keyboard shortcut keys." These are commands that run when two keys are pressed at the same time. The client had pressed "Ctrl" and "a" rather than "Shift" and "a" for a capital letter. "Ctrl a" means "highlight the entire document," and once the document or any part of the document is highlighted, it will react to the next keystroke, in this case, the word "gain." The word processing program then replaced the whole document with "gain."

After we had determined what had happened to the document, how did we recover it? Fortunately, my client had not shut down the word processing program, which would have either saved only "gain" or saved nothing, as the document had not been saved at anytime during typing. So we used another keyboard shortcut key, the command "Ctrl z" which will undo the last and the last several actions from the keyboard. The client pressed "Ctrl z" and the document was back, a "save," and we were back on track.

We have a couple of reminders here: first is save your work often, make sure "autosave" is turned on, as it will save a copy of your work every 10 minutes that will be available if your PC stops for some reason. Second, "Ctrl z" can be used to undo a recent error on your document up to the last "save."

'Til next week, (ComputerFAQ#172) Robert


Robert

 

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