Is this a Word or Windows or PC problem?

[Leslie]

I've been working on a book manuscript, on an HP computer, MS Office and Windows 7. Something is corrupt. I access a file, edit it, save it, and the date for modification does not update, sometimes. This happens regardless of if I click on the save icon, or go to File and Save As. Other times it does update. Sometimes the file totally disappears, no icon for that section/chapter in that folder. If I remember the file name and search, it's there. Save again and sometimes the icon will appear, sometimes not. If I don't get the icon to appear, after a day or so, the file will be gone. I can't access it by searching, have to copy over from my backup drive.

It will be next April before I can buy a new PC, but in January I'll go to the UK. I may be able to buy another copy of MS Office, but will that help? This is driving me to distraction, particularly losing the files at times. It seems to be random, not consistent.

 

[VictorBravo]

That is strange. Do you have a flash drive? If so, you might try saving to that instead. It almost sounds like a hard drive problem.

Otherwise, try saving a copy to your desktop.

The reason I suggest these things is that I had similar problems on an old laptop a few years back. It finally completely fried its hard drive after a few months of random errors. I was very happy that I had backed up all my work and worked from a flash drive only. It was nothing to keep going on another (old) computer.

 

[nicnap]

Mary, I can't help you much, but you may want to consider downloading recuva; it will search your hard drive for any recoverable documents, and you can recover them if they haven't been overwritten. Also, you might want to look into dropbox, and also always copy and past your info in an in-line email to yourself -- perhaps an account especially set up for your writing (?); I would go with gmail because of its virtually unlimited storage. You can download recuva here: Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download .

Hope this helps.

 

[JoannaV]

If you're worried about it being an Office problem, you could download OpenOffice for free and try using that instead.

However, it does sound like a problem with your computer itself.

 

[Scottish Lass]

I second saving to Dropbox (or some other version of cloud storage--the advantage with Dropbox is that files can be accessed/synced across multiple computers.) Several of us have accounts--I'd be more than happy to give you a link (I get a little extra free space that way). http://db.tt/LgRsMMil should do it if you're so inclined.

 

[Leslie]

Does one have to pay for Dropbox? I have a problem here in that it is insane to send any credit card number electronically from this country. So I can't pay for anything from here.

 

[VictorBravo]

It's free for for 2 GB storage, which means a lot of documents.

Dropbox - Simplify your life

 

[Leslie]

Thanks for your replies. I think the bottom line is that I'll need to buy another laptop if I want to keep my sanity. I can only get online about once every 3 days or so. I'm double backing up to an external hard drive plus a memory stick for safety.

 

[jogri17]

An excellent choice, but I strongly suggest dropbox saving. Saving to the web is the safest way way to guard a document. With Dropbox, it saves to your harddrive AND to the internet.