lost Notepad file

C

Cindy

I spent countless hours compiling information on NotePad
(about 10-14 pages).
I was going to copy/paste my file to Microsoft Word for
editing. I right-clicked, copied, opened a new Word file,
and pasted. Nothing was there. I went back to my NotePad
file.
Nothing. The file was there, but it was empty. I have
searched every file for this information; looked in the
Recycle Bin, and did a system restore. Nothing.

PLEASE tell me a way to find my file. I am desperate.

Thank you so much.
 
S

Shenan Stanley

Cindy said:
I spent countless hours compiling information on NotePad
(about 10-14 pages).
I was going to copy/paste my file to Microsoft Word for
editing. I right-clicked, copied, opened a new Word file,
and pasted. Nothing was there. I went back to my NotePad
file.
Nothing. The file was there, but it was empty. I have
searched every file for this information; looked in the
Recycle Bin, and did a system restore. Nothing.

PLEASE tell me a way to find my file. I am desperate.

Thank you so much.

I'm guessing before you cut/pasted - you saved.. and saved as again to make
sure you had a backup?
 
H

Harry Ohrn

It might be too late as it is possible you have already lost the data but if
you haven't restarted your computer and haven't copied over the data that
was in the clipboard simply launch Notepad and press Ctrl+V to see if you
can paste the data back. It might still be in the clipboard.

Can I ask why you didn't compile this in Word to begin with? At least Word
creates a temporary file to work out of and sometimes you can get data back
out of that temp file.
 
M

Michael

You probably issued (clicked) a "cut" rather than "copy" command, then you
opened Word and whatever was in Clipboard - in RAM - was... gone?
On the other hand, I do not see how the "paste" command was available in
Word if the Clipboard was empty? Also, you cannot (the respective
command -ctrl c, ctrl x - is unavailable - or "grayed out" in Edit menu)
"copy" an empty Notepad file on the Clipboard to erase the content.
Moreover, when you try to close Notepad, it will ask you to confirm the
change of content... you just click No and the text will be there even if
you cut it before (and did not save the 'cut').
All in all, either you have a memory problem (albeit, you should have seen a
BSOD), or you run some RAM manager, or you messed up the files.
For ex., you might have pasted some blank 1st page in Word, might have
messed up by some weird normal.dot with a few 'blank' pages, white fonts,
html view etc.
I would search for all files *.txt, *.doc created/modified that day, then
I'd look for .tmp files too and hope System Restore left some of it.
Also, you can download some file undelete utility from the web - few are
free at least to see if you still have the file.
Good luck :)
Michael

You might have
 
K

Kent Betts

It is necessary to use caution when using copy and paste as it is easy to
do a cut operation by mistake. It is easy to see when this happens...the
cut operation makes the info disappear from notepad, to indicate that it
has been "cut."

If the notepad file has been saved following this "cut", the data would
be wiped out.

This scenario is at variance with the one you described, as the events
described in your post, and the resulting loss of data, are very
improbable.

If you did a "cut" operation in error, and it is easy to do since the cut
and copy commands are close together on the menu, the way out of the
problem is to exit notepad. The program will ask, as you have probably
seen a few times, save changes yes no. This is one of those times you
really need to hit no. If you hit yes, the changes will be saved, as you
asked the machine to do, and the change in this case is that your data is
gone.

I have lost a file from time to time...in this case the countless hours
situation suggests that somewhere in that time it would be a good idea to
have a diskette or two available to put a working copy of the file on.
Since it is easy to lose data by clicking the wrong button, it is a good
idea to make a copy on the A drive from time to time to provide some
insurance agains operator error.

In this case you would save to my documents, the save to A, then save to
My Documents again to let the notepad program know to stay away from the
a drive when saving the next changes. But to have countless hours of
work disappear is well an indication that a prudent procedure was
omitted, i.e. the value of the data does vary with the amount of time
invested, and the more valuable the data, the more care that must be
taken to protect the data against loss....whether the loss is due to
machine malfunction, or as is more frequent, a human error.
 
J

Jenifer Scot

I am hoping when you performed this process, you went
into your edit menu, chose SELECT ALL ( your entire
documenrt will highlight), then COPY ( this will copy the
content console to the clipboard), then PASTE into the
application you chose. You would then see all of the
content from the program you copied it from. If you did
not select all in your document, it will not copy the
items, for you did not tell the system to do so.
 

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