Docs are Read Only & All Words Replaced With ##

[YaelleG]

I am in a bad, bad, bad bad place right now. For 2+ days I've been trying to get help & have gotten nowhere. Slowly.
First, I have some brain damage. Because of this, I have to write down Everything I do constantly. Sometimes I take it really far, like minute details of every little thing. Its pretty much the only way I can function. Or...whatever you call what I do.

So a couple fo days ago my computer - its a Toshiba Satellite laptop running Weirdos 8 - restarted itself. I think it had gotten hot (which actually seemed to not be a reasonable thing to do at the time) and just shut down unexpectedly. I don't think it was supposed to be overheating right then but it did.
Oh, and one thing that happens is the error message "Document is locked for editing" when I try to open something. I also am greeted with this:

A box opens up - says ASCII Filter Options
Default Fonts: (Times New Roman)
Language: (English USA) & then paragraph break has CR&LF chosen

I'm lost - I'm way too reliant on my notes. In fact, I haven't backed up anything to an external drive in about 30 -35 days because I cant find the USB cord. Or something...I don't even know what it is I lost, as bad as that sounds. In my 30s but since developing my lil issue, I lose things constantly. ((my mother actually has to come here & dispense my meds to me because I often forget instantly)

Googled the issue & did this ----

I took 2 active documents & tried to save them as different forms. For instance, they were originally ...whatever the default is, sorry I'm not even sure! and now I have one that is Title.RTF
another is now called
Other Document Got Corrupted. TXT and I just noticed 1 second ago that rather than #### its now showing as this:
Character Set: Unicode
& all of the "words" look like ....waves?

So that didn't help any.

Please help. I may just try uninstalling the whole program & reinstalling...? I don't know if that's a good idea though. Help.
Thanks.

***EDIT: I want to add that I read somewhere where people advised others to ... well, here's the link. They're sayng to find file names or something....?
I can NOT understand how to do this. Parlty because I've been a mac user for so many years & patly because this Windows 8 PC is just so bizarre, I don't know What I'm doing half the time. And then having the 50 First Dates issue helps none.
http://www.justanswer.com/computer/6kt8 ... -open.html

[YaelleG]

Oh I just looked and the usual setting is for my documents to be .ODT. Not something I'd heard of before but I figured maybe its an Open Office thing.
So they say DocumentName.odt

I tell you what - if someone is able to help me resolve this problem quickly, I will try to find a way to repay you. (& if youre a video gamer, I can totally hook you up if youre into Pokemon! I know i'm too old for this but I'm addicted. Big time.)

[ed40]

I had the same problem, this might help:

https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=68713

[John_Ha]

Let me try and take your questions one by one. I will assume your lost file is called fred.odt.

I think it had gotten hot (which actually seemed to not be a reasonable thing to do at the time) and just shut down unexpectedly.

Laptops blow air through to keep the chip cool and this air channel soon gets clogged with fluff of all kinds. It is well worth while cleaning all the fluff out as the laptop will run much cooler. You need to open up the case to get to the heatsink - google for help.

"Document is locked for editing" when I try to open something

When you open fred.odt, AOO creates a file called .~lock.fred.odt# in the same folder. If you (or someone else) try to open fred.odt again, AOO sees the ~lock file and gives the "Document is locked for editing" error message. So either you have fred.odt open, or when the laptop shut down, AOO did not delete the ~lock file, and so gives the error message. Just delete the lock file - it is a hidden file. OR answer the questions, and open a copy for editing file.

I haven't backed up anything to an external drive in about 30 -35 days because I cant find the USB cord

If you are so reliant, then fix this! You could backup critical files to a USB memory stick.

I may just try uninstalling the whole program & reinstalling...?

That will do nothing useful. Don't bother.

Now to your files.

The odt file(s) with ##### is lost. # is the nul character - your file has nothing in it.

What seems to have happened is that when your laptop crashed, AOO didn't write this file properly.

Your only hope is to try to recover the temporary file AOO was using when the laptop crashed. See instructions in https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/v ... =7&t=68713 to recover this file. You will need a utility which recovers deleted files as the file will not be in the Recycle bin. You will have to search for tmp files stored in the folder AOO uses for its temporary files. The sooner you do this the better as files are not "completely deleted" - they are just flagged to say that the disk space they occupy can be reused. Eventually, the disk space containing the "deleted" file will be re-used, so if you want to recover it, you need to do so before it gets re-used. Every time you use the laptop you risk Windows 8 overwriting this "deleted" file.

now I have one that is Title.RTF

That will open with AOO - it is a Rich Text Format file

another is now called Other Document Got Corrupted. TXT

TXT files will open with Notepad installed on W8 - just double click on the txt file. Or AOO opens TXT files

Oh I just looked and the usual setting is for my documents to be .ODT. Not something I'd heard of before

Excellent! odt is the default file name for AOO text files. This is the best to use for your documents