Forced closed Word 2011 while appleupdate asked for restart, lost 20days of work!

[yellowbook3]

My mum has been working on her Mac air 2011 with word 2011 installed for 20days without turning it off (she clicked sleep mode everytime).
She does click on the save button every few min for the past 20 days, yesterday apple had an update so she allowed the update to continue. The update asked her to closes all programe and restart the PC, but Word is not responding, so she force closed the Word 2011 and restarted the Mac.

Now after she has restarted the mac, she has found that the recent document that she has been working for 20days has revert to the version 20days ago (the last time she restarted her Mac). All the work she has been doing for the past 20days is gone!

What is going on here?Doesnt word actually save the file everytime you click save?

I know she should have backed up her document regularly and been more careful, but she did click the save file everytime, i just dont see how the file is not saved.

is there a way to recover the work? she is very very upset now....I am upset if i lost 5 hours of work she has lost 20 days....and its due very soon...

Please help!

 

[snberk103]

Take this question to a Word on Mac specific forum... I'm sure they'll have the answer in a few minutes. I suspect Word picked up from an earlier version... and just lost track of the current version.

One quick check - in the Finder side panel there should be an icon that kinda looks like a clock, with the word 'Today' next to it. Click that and see if the document appears there. If not, Word has probably hidden it away (for safe keeping) and it will take a Word Guru who knows where Word likes to hide such things to help you find the directory.

Luck.

 

[aarond12]

All the work she has been doing for the past 20 days is gone!

I'm guessing you don't use Time Machine. If you have, just go "back in time" and try restoring an older version. I'm not going to state the obvious about saving frequently or making backups manually...

Another possibility is to search for all files modified within the last 2 days. It's going to be a LOT of files but you might get lucky and find a backup within that list.

 

[yellowbook3]

Take this question to a Word on Mac specific forum... I'm sure they'll have the answer in a few minutes. I suspect Word picked up from an earlier version... and just lost track of the current version.

One quick check - in the Finder side panel there should be an icon that kinda looks like a clock, with the word 'Today' next to it. Click that and see if the document appears there. If not, Word has probably hidden it away (for safe keeping) and it will take a Word Guru who knows where Word likes to hide such things to help you find the directory.

Luck.

Thx for the reply! Any recommandation on such forums?

----------

I'm guessing you don't use Time Machine. If you have, just go "back in time" and try restoring an older version. I'm not going to state the obvious about saving frequently or making backups manually...

Another possibility is to search for all files modified within the last 2 days. It's going to be a LOT of files but you might get lucky and find a backup within that list.

I dont think she uses Time Machine...she is very old fashioned...and I dont own a mac so i cant help her...

 

[snberk103]

Thx for the reply! Any recommandation on such forums?
No, sorry... I'm a Pages person myself. But I'd start with Microsoft and their Word support forums. I'd bet a nickel they maintain a separate thread for Word of Mac users. The advantage of using the official forums is that you often get the engineers weighing in, plus the stupid comments are often weeded out. At least Apple does that for their forums. Not as much fun as Macrumours, but the info to noise is also much higher.

Luck.

One other thing. Your mom should probably not use Word until it's sorted out.

 

[PeggyD]

Any recommandation on such forums?

Try http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/

 

[dakwar]

My mum has been working on her Mac air 2011 with word 2011 installed for 20days without turning it off (she clicked sleep mode everytime).
She does click on the save button every few min for the past 20 days, yesterday apple had an update so she allowed the update to continue. The update asked her to closes all programe and restart the PC, but Word is not responding, so she force closed the Word 2011 and restarted the Mac.

Now after she has restarted the mac, she has found that the recent document that she has been working for 20days has revert to the version 20days ago (the last time she restarted her Mac). All the work she has been doing for the past 20days is gone!

What is going on here?Doesnt word actually save the file everytime you click save?

I know she should have backed up her document regularly and been more careful, but she did click the save file everytime, i just dont see how the file is not saved.

is there a way to recover the work? she is very very upset now....I am upset if i lost 5 hours of work she has lost 20 days....and its due very soon...

Please help!

Which version of Mac OS X is running on your mum's computer? If its Lion it makes Time Machine backups on its own onto the free space of the Machintosh HD (though I'm not sure if this is on by default). If running Lion and Time Machine is on by default, browse to the folder where the word document was saved and then enter Time Machine and hopefully a good version of your word document can be found there.

Other suggestion: restart your computer again. The lost file may return after another restart (though i doubt it).