Losing Text in Word

[Launcelot]

I have an elderly friend who sometimes 'loses' the text he has typed into Word (2003). When this happens there are no paste or undo options available. I have generally assumed that he has accidentally invoked a hotkey function of some kind, but I really cannot identify one that might have this effect.

On the first couple of occasions when this has happened, I have dashed round to his house and inspected the PC whilst the errant file is still open. The temp file seemed to have very little in it and I couldn't open it (or a copy).

I spent several years working in desktop support and don't recall having seen anything like it. I'm wondering if I should put a key-logger on his PC (with his permission), but this problem only occurs intermittently and the log file could be huge.

Any technical or human-behaviour thoughts are welcome.

 

[Madawc]

It's easy to type [Ctrl]A, selecting everything. If you miss this and then type on, the input is lost. But Undo should work.

You could sugggest he try Notepad++, which can be downloaded free and is sufficient for most purposes.

Madawc Williams (East Anglia, UK). Using Crystal 2008 with SQL and Windows XP

 

[Launcelot]

Thanks for your reply. It's the fact that there is no 'undo' available that makes it all so odd.

Unfortunately I don't think he's up to learning a app, but thanks for the suggestion.

Geoff

 

[lionelhill]

has he ever actually seen the text in his word-document before it's "lost"? I've noticed some older people have a very different approach to entering data to younger ones (for example, an older friend who found the cursor anoying: "Make it go away! I don't like it flashing around like that"). If your friend is in the habit of typing without looking at the screen, he may never have got his text into word. It's fairly easy to click somewhere outside the active application, and type away happily, without realising your key-strokes are disappearing into oblivion.

 

[macropod]

Quite possibly your user has selected some content, then started typing. By default, this deletes whatever was selected. To change this, behaviour, go to tools|Options|Edit and uncheck the first entry - 'Typing replaces selection'. Now, the worst that will happen is that the newly-typed text will be in the wrong location - but at least the previously-selected text will still be there.

Cheers
Paul Edstein
[MS MVP - Word]

 

[Launcelot]

Thanks lionelhill - I have wondered about this, although it's quite difficult to open Word and then alter the Windows focus without the screen changing in some way. I'll quiz the user about the way he works.

Thanks macropod - if the overtyping effect occurs, it appears that the 'undo' function becomes available. However, it's a simple change to uncheck the 'Typing replaces selection' option so I'll try that too.

Geoff

 

[macropod]

The 'Undo' is useful if the user recognizes immediately what's happened, less so later on and useless if the document has been closed in the meantime.

Cheers
Paul Edstein
[MS MVP - Word]

 

[mscallisto]

Maybe get the user into the habit of typing a paragraph, look at it to see if it's really there then do intermediate saves after each paragraph.

Sam

 

[Launcelot]

Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. I've issued a suitable directive to the user and tweaked the autosave. Hopefully he will remember what to do.

Geoff