Oops!

[Chuck Davis]

My turn!

Word 2003, Win XP Pro SP2. P4 3.06 GHz

I have a 160 page Word document that I have been working on for some time.
It has a TOC, Index and cross references throughout. I took interest in an
earlier post regarding updating the entries and page numbering in the TOC. A
reference was made to this site for more information:
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/toc/CreateATOC.html

This paragraph caught my eye:
"Tables of Contents don't update automatically when you add a new heading to
your document. This is because a ToC is a field. To update a Table of
Contents, put your cursor in the Table of Contents and press F9 to update
it. Or ctrl-a F9 to update all fields in the document."

When I did the Crtl A and F9 all was selected and I could watch the
progress. When the process was over, I clicked the document, which was now
the same grey color as the TOC, to start typing and the document content was
deleted. What would have been the correct action to unselect? When viewed
in Windows Explorer, it shows the size to be 907 KB, but when opening it
indicates 407,751 characters, then-zilch!
I went to my second computer and opened the document in Word 2000-zilch!

Happyness is a recent backup!!

What would have been the correct action to unselect?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm not sure how you got your entire document into a field. Undo would have
reversed any adverse effects, but there is no way to "unselect" if in fact
your entire document has been swallowed by a field.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Chuck,

I suspect what happened was that you still had the Ctrl key held down from
the Ctrl+A when you pressed F9. The Ctrl+F9 shortcut inserts a pair of field
braces around whatever is selected -- presto, everything is in one big
field. True, an immediate Undo would have fixed it, but it's too late for
that now.

Press Alt+F9 to display all field codes. I think you'll find all your stuff
inside the outermost set of braces.

Before you do anything else, use File > Save As to make a copy of the
document, and work on the copy instead of the original.

Select everything *except* the outermost field braces -- carefully, because
selecting either brace will select the entire field. Cut the contents to the
clipboard, move the cursor outside the braces, and paste. Then you can
delete the empty braces, press Alt+F9 again to toggle back to field results,
and you should be back where you were before. If not, take another copy of
the original file and try again.

Next time, be careful with those shortcuts!

 

[Chuck Davis]

Windows XP backup allowed me to restore the file to last Sunday's condition.
I have only "lost" 4,232 characters. Thanks.