For both of you who regularly read my blog (mom, are you there?) ... hah, just kidding, though I know more people read it on my FB feed anyway ... I finished A Caveman Story over the weekend, and now I'm into the proofing and editing before I send it somewhere to be proofed and edited.
Exciting times, as I untwist awkward phrases and cut extraneous words (I like extraneous words, so I need a fairly blunt scalpel). But it's not the most fun thing in the world because when you read the same stuff over and over, it starts to take on Captcha semblance.
So imagine my horror when I went to get into the files and found out that my latest version (saved early and often) was CORRUPTED. Word couldn't open the file. All of my edits from pages 28 to 59 were inaccessible.
Yeah, you say, that's just thirty pages. But the edits were awesome and I did not want to lose them.
I didn't get a chance to work on it again until tonight, just before I had to rush out to listen to a BookList reviewer give a presentation. So with minutes before I had to leave, I was frantically researching how to recover a corrupt file.
And during my research, what I learned gave me some hope, but not much.
But I succeeded, and I'll post these words of wisdom to anyone who might benefit.
My document was Microsoft Word. I couldn't get into it with any Microsoft versions of Word. I tried three computers, no luck. But here's what worked. I tried opening it using 'Word Pad' which is basically a generic word document. When it opened, the beginning of my manuscript was gibberish. With a sinking heard, I paged down, and voila, there it was!
The gibberish part was just the title, but after that all of the manuscript was intact. The formatting was gone, no page numbers or anything, but every single word was there.
Scared it would delete before my eyes, I right clicked and copied the pages I needed, opened a new document, pasted and saved. Then I created a new version of my whole manuscript, cut the unedited relevant pages, pasted the saved corrupted pages back where they belonged. Then it was a few seconds to format, and I was done.
Crisis averted.
I went off to my meeting with a feeling of elation, and a new insight to saving. Save early, save often, and save in multiple files.
Norm
www.normcowie.com
Yes, I know what you went through. I wasn't as lucky. The file was trashed. I don't even use Word anymore. I would but I don't want to pay extra for it so I settle for the word processor in Works. It doesn't transfer from Word pad as smoothly but everything else seems to be the same as Word.
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