Would Ctrl-A by itself wipe out a document in Works?

[Doc]

I got a panicked phone call from a family member who says they had a
long document they were composing in Works and had been saving it
regularly with Ctrl-S. They said they were almost done when they
accidentally hit Ctrl-A and it wiped out the document. According to
them, they did nothing else.

This doesn't make sense to me but I've never used Works. Does this
sound plausible? Ctrl-A always just highlights all text in every app
I've ever seen. This person isn't the most computer savvy - I asked
them if they had done ANYTHING else since hitting CTRL-A. They said
no. But the thing that came to mind is that they hit Ctrl-A and then
maybe the space bar which wiped the doc. To my thinking, if they
simply close out the doc without saving it further, and then reopen
it, the doc up to the point of the last save should be there, yes?

They did so and still got the same blank doc. Whatever they did, the
content of the doc is gone.

Is there any way simply hitting Ctrl-A would do this?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I got a panicked phone call from a family member who says they had a
long document they were composing in Works and had been saving it
regularly with Ctrl-S. They said they were almost done when they
accidentally hit Ctrl-A and it wiped out the document. According to
them, they did nothing else.

This doesn't make sense to me but I've never used Works. Does this
sound plausible? Ctrl-A always just highlights all text in every app
I've ever seen. This person isn't the most computer savvy - I asked
them if they had done ANYTHING else since hitting CTRL-A. They said
no. But the thing that came to mind is that they hit Ctrl-A and then
maybe the space bar which wiped the doc. To my thinking, if they
simply close out the doc without saving it further, and then reopen
it, the doc up to the point of the last save should be there, yes?

They did so and still got the same blank doc. Whatever they did, the
content of the doc is gone.

Is there any way simply hitting Ctrl-A would do this?

Your description of the Ctrl+A phenomenon is accurate but
the report you received from your friend is not. Ctrl+A will
indeed mark the whole document. To cause total loss of all
information, the user must do two additional things:
1. He must press another character on they keyboard, e.g.
the Space Bar.
2. He must save the document in its truncated form.

The user probably followed this sequence: Ctrl+A, Space Bar, Ctrl+S.

It is quite common for people who are not particularly
computer-savvy to report something completely different
from what they actually did.

 

[Rod]

maybe the space bar which wiped the doc. To my thinking, if they

simply close out the doc without saving it further, and then reopen
it, the doc up to the point of the last save should be there, yes?
yes.

They did so and still got the same blank doc. Whatever they did, the
content of the doc is gone.
Is there any way simply hitting Ctrl-A would do this?

No.

new users often need a strong negative action to endear them to
a regime.
I nagged my nipper to use ALT/F/S to save documents,
(that avoids the CTRL S or even worse CTRL D accidents)
after he wasted a 2 hour type session with a lost document,
he now obliges.
Extra long documents, I encourage him to use ALT/F/A
and save with an incremential number after the file name
eg: project 1 2, 3, etc.
That way he will never lose an entire doc.
with what? a simple 4 strike save regime.

 

[witan]

No.

new users often need a strong negative action to endear them to
a regime.
I nagged my nipper to use ALT/F/S to save documents,
(that avoids the CTRL S or even worse CTRL D accidents)
after he wasted a 2 hour type session with a lost document,
he now obliges.
Extra long documents, I encourage him to use ALT/F/A
and save with an incremential number after the file name
eg: project 1 2, 3, etc.
That way he will never lose an entire doc.
with what? a simple 4 strike save regime.

I have no experience of Works, but all the word processors I have used
in the last 15 years (WordStar, ChiWriter, WordPerfect for DOS and for
Windows; Microsoft Word) have or had a provision for creating a backup
copy on save. On more than one occasion, the backups have saved me
immense trouble.

 

[Rod]

I have no experience of Works, but all the word processors I have used
in the last 15 years (WordStar, ChiWriter, WordPerfect for DOS and for
Windows; Microsoft Word) have or had a provision for creating a backup
copy on save. On more than one occasion, the backups have saved me
immense trouble.

Works offers this.
File / Save as / "create a backup copy" [requires a tick in a box]

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I got a panicked phone call from a family member who says they had a
long document they were composing in Works and had been saving it
regularly with Ctrl-S. They said they were almost done when they
accidentally hit Ctrl-A and it wiped out the document. According to
them, they did nothing else.

One of two things happened. Either he did something else or he didn't wipe
out the document. My guess is that he subsequently hit another character,
then saved the document.

Ctrl-A by itself can't possibly wipe out anything. All it does is select
everything in the document.

This doesn't make sense to me but I've never used Works.

It has nothing to do with Works. It has to do with what these keys mean in
Windows.

Does this
sound plausible?

Absolutely not.

Ctrl-A always just highlights all text in every app
I've ever seen.

Correct.


This person isn't the most computer savvy - I asked
them if they had done ANYTHING else since hitting CTRL-A. They said
no.

He is mistaken.

But the thing that came to mind is that they hit Ctrl-A and then
maybe the space bar which wiped the doc.

Or any other key. Yes, very likely.

To my thinking, if they
simply close out the doc without saving it further, and then reopen
it, the doc up to the point of the last save should be there, yes?

They did so and still got the same blank doc. Whatever they did, the
content of the doc is gone.

Then he saved it after wiping it out.

Is there any way simply hitting Ctrl-A would do this?

As I said before, absolutely not. The report you got can not possibly be
correct.

 

[Code-Curious Mom]

I totally agree with you as to what likely happened. Although weird
glitches are possible. We once had a program (Wordpad, I think) say it had
saved documents, but upon trying to reopen them, they appeared empty. A
reboot fixed the issue, but the content had vanished. Corruption of some
sort, I presume; never happened again after that day.
Anyhow, I would not argue with the person it happened to, if they want to
think it was some odd glitch, fine -- after all we weren't there -- just
make sure they know to avoid what we have already decided is a likely cause.
As a long shot, they might check the temp folder to see if a partial copy
might be available.
*Nothing to do with the OP*, but it is not unheard of for Ctrl-A to be used
for some other purpose, although 'select all' is certainly the most common.
(A very old version of Works uses it to insert the filename.)

 

[Seahawk60B]

I got a panicked phone call from a family member who says they had a
long document they were composing in Works and had been saving it
regularly with Ctrl-S. They said they were almost done when they
accidentally hit Ctrl-A and it wiped out the document. According to
them, they did nothing else.

This doesn't make sense to me but I've never used Works. Does this
sound plausible? Ctrl-A always just highlights all text in every app
I've ever seen. This person isn't the most computer savvy - I asked
them if they had done ANYTHING else since hitting CTRL-A. They said
no. But the thing that came to mind is that they hit Ctrl-A and then
maybe the space bar which wiped the doc. To my thinking, if they
simply close out the doc without saving it further, and then reopen
it, the doc up to the point of the last save should be there, yes?

They did so and still got the same blank doc. Whatever they did, the
content of the doc is gone.

Is there any way simply hitting Ctrl-A would do this?

For future reference, teach them how to use Edit-Undo (CTRL-Z). If
they hadn't closed out the document, they could have undone their
accidental deletion and recovered their work, even if they had saved
it in the interim.

 

[Opinicus]

But the thing that came to mind is that they hit Ctrl-A and then
maybe the space bar which wiped the doc.

My wife did this once (and lost her work; fortunately we had a recent
backup) and a second time in which she nearly lost her work but had the
presence of mind to call me before she did anything else. I solved the
problem by disabling control-A on her machine. There's a program called
ColdKey that allows you to selectively disable troublesome/dangerous key
combinations.

 

[Andrew Murray]

I have no experience of Works, but all the word processors I have used
in the last 15 years (WordStar, ChiWriter, WordPerfect for DOS and for
Windows; Microsoft Word) have or had a provision for creating a backup
copy on save. On more than one occasion, the backups have saved me
immense trouble.

They should also have an "autosave" function (I know that MS Word has this)
which routinely auto-saves the document at intervals (eg every 10 minutes -
this can be set by the user) which means if the computer or the application
crashes, then the file can be recovered.