Disappearing document (Word 2000)

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Any ideas on this one? Last night my wife was creating several documents. All went well with saving them until the third one. When she saved it in her folder, it disappeared and when retrieved, it showed only three letters (eci) on the first line. It was a basic letter. Details show that it has 19 Kb, but nothing other than those three letters appear. I’ve tried different views. Tried Quick View Plus. Nothing.

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I suspect that somehow, she renamed the files or accidentally dragged them somewhere (or hit the delete key by mistake). First look in the recycle bin & sort by descending date. If that doesn’t work, do a search in Windows itself for the latest files created or modified:
1. Click an empty spot on the taskbar & press F3.
2. Make sure that the look in box is your primary hard drive & that “include subfolders” is ticked.
3. Leave the “named” box blank.
4. Click the Date tab & select the bottom radio button & choose 1 day. (Windows won’t let you choose less than one day.)

Hope this helps.

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Thanks, Phil, for the suggestions.

I had, in fact, searched for the doc under its file name and found a shortcut and the doc itself, though only with the “eci” content. I tried your broader search and found 6 Word docs, all of which contained what they should. Curiously, there are three shortcuts to this particular one (4:23, 4:28, and 4:33 p.m.) and two files with the doc name (4:21 and 5:45). Again, only “eci.” The recycle bin was emptied last night–didn’t think of looking in that before I ran it. My son also tells me he clicked “undo” when the scream of anguish came from my wife. She claims she did nothing unusual or different. Anyway, she recreated the letter (in disgust). Guess it’s to remain a mystery.

Thanks again for your help.

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One more thought about what might have happened, not that it will help. If your wife is a fast typist, and tried to save the file (Ctrl+S), then close Ctrl+W…she may have pressed Ctrl+A (select all), then typed eci or pressed Ctrl+X & then Ctrl+S. All those letters are pretty close to each other–selecting, cutting, saving, & closing–but disastrously different results.

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An interesting possibility–fast typist, yes, but she’s a slave to the mouse. I have to remind her about the occasional need to use Ctrl-Alt-Del.

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