So I was in a word Doc - I went to copy some text, hi-lited and hit Control C. To my great consternation, my text disappeared. When I tried to see if I could paste - using control V - something different pasted - a previous copy that was unrelated. I tried using autorecover - it says I should be saving a version every 10 mins but I didn't have anything - previous versions available. The doc was not saved except a few lines not hi-lited. So I'm at a loss.


Is there any way I can recover this text or is it gone. I'd love to have it, as it won't be easy to re-write. Is there any way that Control C "holds on" to something that is hi-lited. Or is there something I can do in Word to get it ?

The text is undoubtedly lost. One possibility is that you inadvertently brushed the space bar which would have deleted the selection. CTRL+Z would have undone the change, but not once the document has been closed.

You could look in the recovery folder (usually a sub folder of your document folder) and check the dates of any files that are there. If there are any files that are appropriately dated and have sufficient file size, you may be able to open them in Word. Failing that, and if you feel so inclined, you may be able to open them in Open Office, but adding Open Office may create a few problems of its own.

AutoRecovery is designed to aid recovery following a cash (you have not had a crash). It is not a file backup. If you want a true file backup see http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm

__________________
Graham Mayor - MS MVP (Word) (2002-2019)
Visit my web site for more programming tips and ready made processes www.gmayor.com

I just want to re-emphasize ctrl + z here. Stuff like this happens to all of us. But the first thing you should try and do is "undo" to see if it will come back, you might have to hit it a couple of times if a couple of things were involved in the process between what you had and where you ended up.

Also, while auto-save is a nice feature, it's a good habit to be hitting ctrl + s every once in awhile, every couple of sentences or so, and just manually saving your document as often as possible. Never know when something might crash.