My Stupidity Cancels Superbowl Party

[KayBratt]

Oh, Kay! Hope the edits go quickly and smoothly for you.  I cannot tell you how many times, on the day a brief is due to be filed, some attorney on the case will do that whole edit an email attachment thing without first saving it. Then we have to all go through the stages of grief until whoever did it finally accepts that the edits are gone. Poof.

Lol, Melissa. Yes, I went through about seven stages of grief including shaking and nausea before I moved on to starting over! I've got a few more hours to go, will probably be done before the Superbowl starts. Though we've already cancelled going to the party and I have no idea who is playing...

[JETaylor]

Oh Kay - that so royally sucks.  I've done it many times before and it is quite defeating. 

Glad to see you've reigned in the panic and gotten to it now - just remember to SAVE AS before you begin - then the Save as you go. 

I feel for you - oh and The Patriots are playing against the Giants tonight.  Hope you get your edits done in time. 

 

[HeidiHall]

Oh, no!  I've done this and feel your pain. After completely redoing my work I found it in my "downloads" folder. Luckily I was able to merge the two and have to admit I ended up better off for it. Sorry you have to miss your party though!

[David Adams]

That really sucks. d*mn.

That's one of the reasons I do all my work on Google Docs (with local backups made occasionally). All revisions are tracked, and Google's backup system tends to be a little better than anything I can do...

Of course, I still download copies of my books to ODT whenever I feel paranoid. Like... right now.

[mathewferguson]

Perhaps you've already tried this...

Open document from email. Click save as. Then you'll find the directory where the computer saves email open documents.

Navigate from hard drive to find it. Often it is in a hidden file. You will have to change properties of the folder to show all hidden.

Windows can be tricky - especially when it doesn't use the temp directory for stuff like this.

[Robert E. Keller]

If you put this in a Yahoo search finding a doc opened in email some stuff comes up that might be useful (if you haven't tried that already).

[Millard]

I'm so paranoid about backing up in general, that aside from Dropbox/emailing myself, when I do the regular back-up-my-life's-work burn to a DVD, I fire off two copies, and put one outside in the shed, just in case the house burns down.

[TexasGirl]

One of the reasons I started the Mary Ballard Chapbook Poetry Prize is that during a tornado, my grandmother (Mary Ballard) lost her home, and in one closet, she had a box full of her handwritten poems, her life's work.

The house was not important, but she never recovered from the loss of that poetry, and was a different person from then on.

We had thousands of people lose their homes to wildfires here a few months ago. Two of my writer friends lost everything--computers, hard drives, thumb drives, CD backups. A few reconstructed old drafts of works from email versions sent to critique buddies, but most of their work was lost.

I email myself every draft of every thing I write. I also back up a CD and send it to stay in my fiance's work desk, so it exists somewhere else. It holds all my writing plus my favorite images of my children throughout their lives.

I can't imagine losing everything I'd ever written. That's why I'm publishing a lot of it! It's OUT there.

[LisaGraceBooks]

So sorry. What a nightmare.

[Alan Petersen]

Ouch! I feel for you. Been there, done that.

I also recommend Dropbox. Works wonderfully no matter where you're at or from what computer. I can be writing away at Starbucks at and when I get home, voilà... it's all synched and ready to rock n roll.

[kindlescribbler.com]

this same thing happened to me the other day - and I freaked out. But then I opened my 'downloads' file in firefox, which is how I downloaded it from my email - and it had saved the changes there somehow. Thank goodness!

[Rebecca Burke]

This string of sympathetic comments certainly proves that misery loves company--most of us in the editing/writing biz have had many versions of this calamity. I don't know what's worse, though--losing all your edits in the first place, or reconstructing and redoing your work, only to get a suggestion from someone as to how to find the original edits!

I worked in educational publishing for many years, writing and editing many monster textbooks (lit and lang. arts textbooks for secondary level that were usually in the realm of 600-800 pages). I could tell you stories that would make you weep. We had folders filled with folders filled with folders filled with files of documents in various stages of editing by various editors, all of whom could be trusted upon to be human some day and do something dumb. And of course there are some jobs so tedious (like editing Shakespeare plays against modern English "translations," e.g.) that to have to repeat your work is nearly enough to make you suicidal.

Thought this might cheer you up! It did me (knowing I'm done with that)!

[cblewgolf]

There's gotta be a solution here somewhere.  Have you tried going to a different computer and checking that email again?  Just go to your sent files and the email will be there with the attachment.

[KayBratt]

There's gotta be a solution here somewhere.  Have you tried going to a different computer and checking that email again?  Just go to your sent files and the email will be there with the attachment.

I've tried every suggestion that has come up (thanks everyone for trying) and it is not to be found. The email is there, with the attachment, but shows not updated with the Saturday changes, even after I checked it 312 times.  The same document is on the hard drive with same file name but modified date of only the Thursday before. And I checked inside and it didn't have my edits. This happened to me once before about two years ago and after a few hours my hubby found it in temp files with some weird name. This time he could not find it, and two other very intelligent 'computer geeks' called and walked me through steps and I still couldn't find it. I know it sounds crazy and impossible, but it just isn't there. It's baffling, especially to someone who clicks SAVE about every few paragraphs! So, I've moved on and finished this round of edits and sent it off. I have a week that I don't have to look at it. 

(Computer geeks, you know who you are and you referred to yourself as a computer geek, so don't be offended! I just really appreciate your call!)

[cblewgolf]

Sorry to hear.
I've grown accustomed to saving everything like this now...."Deep Rough Final 1-25-12"  "The Lost Journal Final 1-23-12"  with the dates.