Arrggg!!! I had a research proposal due in to the EPA this afternoon. Last night, while saving the file, the Word crashed destroying everything in the file. Luckily I had a back up copy on my home computer (unfortunately is was missing the most recent 4 hours of my work). So I went home and spent the night repeating the work I did during the day. I got a few hours of sleep and then got up early to make a few final changes. While saving this version onto my flashdrive, Word once again freaked out and erased the file. Luckily I still had a copy on my hard drive but it was once again missing my last hour or so of editing changes. Once again, I repeated a lost hour of work and then headed into my office.
I opened the file on my laptop so that I could add the final figures to the text and you guessed, Word locked up when I pasted the figures into the document. I had to ctrl alt delete out of the program. When I tried to reopen the document, Word had once again erased it from my flashdrive. I had to rush back home to get the copy off my home computer, mean while I've got a room full of students waiting for me another group lining up at more door for help with various problems.
I did somehow manage to get the proposal sent in, no thanks to Microsoft. I'm a bit afraid to look at it now. I wonder how many of my editing changes were lost in the process.
There is nothing unusual about the document I was writing. It does contain several large figures but these figures have all been used in previous documents without event. These three crashes happened on three different computers, using three different operating systems and on two different flash drives. The only common thread was MS Word.
Can anywhere here drive by microsoft and spray the building with a few hundred bullets for me? Kill!! Kill!!! Kill!!!
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
I'm sorry you lost so much work. I know how it feels.
This doesn't help you now, nor excuse MS, but in the future, once a word file crashes, you should do a "Save As" or make a new file and copy and paste everything into it. The incremental save feature is one of the things that screws things up.
I don't know if this applies to Word 2003, but it definitely helped in earlier versions.
Posted by Shmuel (Member # 7586) on :
quote:The incremental save feature is one of the things that screws things up.
Turning "fast save" off entirely is a good idea, too, for the same reason.
Posted by Beren One Hand (Member # 3403) on :
I'm sorry to hear that.
If it makes you feel any better, Microsoft's reign of terror will not last forever.
Google's launch of its recommended software package (which includes Firefox) is a step towards challenging Microsoft's PC-space dominance.
quote:The rise of Google, mobile devices and wireless networks will spell the end to Microsoft’s dominance in the software market, Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy predicted last week.
Speaking at MIT Technology Review’s annual emerging technologies conference, Joy said the emergence of the new technologies and the “near” and “here” Web ushers in a new era of user interfaces that will replace Windows and “nomadic” computing. CRN
Of course, in a few years from now, users will complaining about Google, too. Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Dag, I always do that. In this case, I couldn't do an incremental save after the crash since the entire files were lost. I was only save because I had older version save in different places. Fast save is disabled on at least two of the computers, I need to check the third.
Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :
Have you tried open office?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
It's worth noting that Bill Joy is almost always wrong.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Have you tried open office?
Not more stable for me last time I tried - although I haven't tried the newest version.
quote:Dag, I always do that. In this case, I couldn't do an incremental save after the crash since the entire files were lost. I was only save because I had older version save in different places. Fast save is disabled on at least two of the computers, I need to check the third.
Yikes. I haven't found a solution beyond that - it just seems to h appen, very rarely, to large documents. I had one 45-page document that I had to copy paragraph by paragraph - one particular paragraph was the one causing the crash. It wasn't worth the time it took except I really wanted to know what the heck was going on.
quote:Google's launch of its recommended software package (which includes Firefox) is a step towards challenging Microsoft's PC-space dominance.
It's worth noting that Firefox has not been more stable for me than IE 6 was. It crashes about twice a month, compared to less than half that for IE 6 when I used it.
But I think it's still worth using, for other reasons.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I've had great luck with firefox. I can't remember the last time it crashed on me. I'm currently posting from Safari (Apple OS X). I think it crashes more that firefox but much less frequently than IE for Mac.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Oh, with me, it's just that IE almost never crashed, not that Firefox crashes much. I heard horror stories from others, and couldn't do much but shrug because I had good luck.
Can't speak to the Mac, of course.
Edit: With Firefox, it's mostly when I lose and regain internet connection while the browser is looking up a site. There's some bug there, but I can't exactly duplicate it.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
MS 2003/04 never gave me any problems.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Me neither, but I haven't written a long, complicated document with lots of diagrams since I upgraded.
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