Vanishing document

[Huggy]

As I was typing, without warning the Page went blank and my entire 1000 words of typing vanished. This has happened previously although I had saved regularly.. I can no longer find it in my Documents although the Title is still there.

[RoryOF]

If by chance you mistyped Ctrl A, that selected all text and the next typed character replaced it.

[Huggy]

I have tried that with no result.

[Huggy]

Is there any way of getting the missing text back ? Can the sutuation be reversed ?

[robleyd]

If the document is still open, you could try Ctrl-Z (undo) - possibly several times - and see if that shows your work.

[Huggy]

Thanks David. Already tried to no avail. I regularly lose words and phrases and Ctrl Z has always brought them back. What does key 'Fn' do ?.

[John_Ha]

Unfortunately this is caused by user error and not by the software.

The quickest way to do it unintentionally is to select text so it is highlighted and press another key - the highlighted text is replaced by what was typed. Ctrl+A selects all the text so it is probable that you wanted to type a capital A with Shift+A but you entered Ctrl+A by error.

If you had not saved the text; or if you did not have AutoSave switched on, and an AutoSave had not happened; and you have closed the document, you have lost the text. Undo or Ctrl+Z should undo the last 100 or so of your actions if the file is still open.

If this solves the problem, please view your first post in this thread and click the Edit button (top right in the post) and add [Solved] in front of the subject.

[Huggy]

I have to use Ctrl Z with increasing frequency to recover a line as a i000/1500 word Article progresses. Surely it is unusual for an entire document to vanish ?

[jrkrideau]

Not if you have a cat.

It is unusual but it is not difficult to do as Rory suggests.

[John_Ha]

See Re: Text has vanished for a full description of what almost certainly happened.

[Huggy]

Thanks John. Read with interest. I am not a touch typist. thus the Points 1 - End are largely me, - however I have stayed reasonably calm. Losses of ten or more words of script do occur fairly frequently though, - usually towards the end of a Page. Seldom however have I lost an entire Piece. (I have actually lost and replaced some script whilst typing this)

[John_Ha]

I suggest you set up Writer so it opens the pop-up instead of Select All ..., when you hit Ctrl+A by mistake - see the rest of that thread.

[Huggy]

Thank you John. Where is Writer ?.and how do I set it up ? I am a 90 year old idiot more inclined to the quill pen. (BG) .,

[John_Ha]

Writer is the name of the word processor.

Do the following to re-assign Ctrl+A within Writer to open the About OpenOffice pop-up window.

1 Tools > Customise > Keyboard
2 Scroll down in the upper window until you find Ctrl+A. left-click to highlight it
3 Click Modify. Ctrl+A now appears in the box marked Keys
4 Choose some function from the Function box - I chose the first one - About OpenOffice
5 I cannot remember - click Save? or OK? - whichever I clicked, it just closed.
6 Type Ctrl+A - note how you now do not select all the text - instead, the pop-up window opens.