Okay. I accidentally closed a file without saving it and lost four pages of work. I know Word does auto-saves and there is some way that you can find auto-saved versions of files. I’m using Word 2000 on a … good grief, I’d forgotten this operating system even existed. On WinME. I have since re-opened and re-named the file, and, in fact, rebooted the computer. Am I utterly hosed, or is there some way for me to make an attempt to find my missing pages?
(eta: I did check the temp directory, which only had a couple obviously Word files in it (and other things I randomly opened were gibberish or empty), with no luck. I don’ tknow if there’s somewhere else temporary files appear…?)
(eta again: Nevermind. Turns out the stuff I lost was modified from part of the original manuscript (which explains why I had no clue what I’d written: all I’d done was make some very moderate changes to existing text. I can do that again without an issue. Whew. Also, boy am I glad I didn’t come make a flaming screaming idiot of myself here only to discover this mistake three hours later… :).)
It may be different for your version of Word…
Look in Tools, Options, and the tab File Locations. That should have the file location of your autorecover information. It’s usually stored in the Documents and Settings section of your computer.
It may be still there if you reopened the file and saved it as something else immediately.
It’s just a longshot, however. Best of luck. It’s hateful to lose words.
Part of what threw me was when I looked at the intarwebs, they told me to look in Documents & Settings, and this particular OS hasn’t got that particular directory name structure. Tisn’t in the TEMP folder, either, though.
But! All is well, it turned out I’d modified the original draft just a bit for this section, so I can re-do it without pulling my hair out. Thank you for the suggestion!
I’m happy to hear that all is well. :)
It might not be a bad thing to discover where your autosaves are located, just in case of future mishap. I had a horrible situation happen a while ago when I had a power outage, and when I rebooted at the restoration of power I discovered that my autosave wasn’t autosaving the way I thought. I lost a couple of pages of work. After much moaning, I took it as a useful learning experience, and rewrote that section (probably better).
It never hurts to double-check these settings every now and again. Good luck with your writing.
Yay! Heart of Stone, I will await you eagerly!