Did I really just do that?

emmaaa

I have been working on designing our invitations for the wedding for about 3 weeks now. I have been super busy at work so I squeeze time in to work on them now and then.

Well, today I was tweaking a few things to print them off and some how deleted the whole thing and the document saved. As a blank document. I can't undo that. It isn't in my trash. I'm computer illiterate. 

I was planning to mail the invitations on Saturday but now I'm not sure if I'll get them done in time. The worst part of it is that I KNOW it was my own fault and that makes me more mad at myself. 

Luckily I think I remember the colors and fonts that I used and I am pretty sure I saved the monogram design I made somewhere.

novella1186

Ugh that is the worst! I'm sorry. I did that a few days ago with my resume-- totally re-wrote the whole thing and added a "summary" section at the top and was so proud of it. Then accidentally exited and didn't save. I was so sad  

Good luck! 

flutteringinfl

Argh, stuff like that's happened to me before. It's the worst and I'm so sorry. Hoping you'll be able to replicate your work quickly and smoothly.

But as an aside, FI has been talking about making our own invitations and I thought he was crazypants. But obviously this means it can be done. So that's good.

thisismynickname2

emmaaa said:

I have been working on designing our invitations for the wedding for about 3 weeks now. I have been super busy at work so I squeeze time in to work on them now and then.

Well, today I was tweaking a few things to print them off and some how deleted the whole thing and the document saved. As a blank document. I can't undo that. It isn't in my trash. I'm computer illiterate. 

I was planning to mail the invitations on Saturday but now I'm not sure if I'll get them done in time. The worst part of it is that I KNOW it was my own fault and that makes me more mad at myself. 

Luckily I think I remember the colors and fonts that I used and I am pretty sure I saved the monogram design I made somewhere.

UGHHHHHHHHHH.  I feel your pain.  

novella1186

Oh, I also lost my thesis paper for grad school after I had just finished it. All 32 pages. I panicked and forced one of my company's IT guys to search for it, but it was not recoverable. So yeah, I know how you feel, and my best advice is to re-do what you can and then kick your feet up and have a huge glass of wine. 

lc07

Do you happen to be on a Mac using time machine?

emmaaa

@novella1186 Deleting my resume would be ten times worse than this! It took me forever to perfect my resume and I still think it needs work.

@flutteringinftmyers It is possible but can be a little time consuming. I made it on Microsoft Publisher using the previously installed fonts and colors and borders. I added a monogram that I could use a free design on weddingchicks.com at the top. We wanted fairly classic and simple invitations anyways so it was doable. If you want something elaborate, I would not recommend it. You could order from vistaprint.com fairly cheap or on Etsy and they will design it for you and you can print your own. 

@thisismynickname It is the worst. My heart sank the moment I realized it was gone. 

emmaaa

lc07 said:

Do you happen to be on a Mac using time machine?

@lc07, nope it's a Dell computer using Windows.

novella1186

emmaaa said:

@novella1186 Deleting my resume would be ten times worse than this! It took me forever to perfect my resume and I still think it needs work.

@flutteringinftmyers It is possible but can be a little time consuming. I made it on Microsoft Publisher using the previously installed fonts and colors and borders. I added a monogram that I could use a free design on weddingchicks.com at the top. We wanted fairly classic and simple invitations anyways so it was doable. If you want something elaborate, I would not recommend it. You could order from vistaprint.com fairly cheap or on Etsy and they will design it for you and you can print your own. 

@thisismynickname It is the worst. My heart sank the moment I realized it was gone. 

I know this won't help you now but maybe in the future: what I've FINALLY learned to do is e-mail myself the most recent version of whatever it is I'm working on. Even if I somehow don't save the new changes, at least I can go back to that version instead of starting from scratch, because no matter what happens, it's in my e-mail. 

emmaaa

novella1186 said:

Oh, I also lost my thesis paper for grad school after I had just finished it. All 32 pages. I panicked and forced one of my company's IT guys to search for it, but it was not recoverable. So yeah, I know how you feel, and my best advice is to re-do what you can and then kick your feet up and have a huge glass of wine. 

@novella1186 Oh  no! Yeah, that's awful and I'm so glad that a wedding inviation is so trivial in the big scheme of things.

Wine is always a must.

On the plus side, FI and I are meeting with our pastor who is officiating the ceremony tonight!

cafarrie

Ugh, that suck!!!!!!  I did this with my very detailed and intricate wedding programs that i made myself (at 2am, 3 days before the wedding).  

lc07

I'm a Mac girl but I'm pretty sure PCs have an option to "System Restore" and go back in time.

amelisha

Have you tried right-clicking on the file wherever you have it saved and clicking "restore previous versions"? Sometimes an earlier save will still be there.

climbingsingle

Nooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!

SteffJay

If you right click on the file in your Windows Explorer window, and go to properties, you should see something called "previous versions", and you can restore your document from there.

lc07

Oh.. just googled System Restore.. looks like it only restores your settings not your personal files. Booooo!

KnightsNurse

One of the girls on here said she used Google Docs as a backup for everything. I decided to start doing that and I'm so glad I did because I knew this is something I would wind up doing. Plus FI can easily edit stuff like the guest list from his computer when I share with him. Sorry you lost it That's one of the worst feelings...

Kahlyla

^ I use Google Docs (now called Google Drive I guess) as a backup as well. And just an FYI, even though the program constantly auto-saves every change you make, you can also infinitely undo and view your revision history. So in theory you could encounter the same problem, but your earlier work would be recoverable - I helped walk someone through that process once who thought they'd lost everything, so I thought I would mention just in case it might help someone!

flyingfoxes

I did this SO MANY TIMES when I was working on my MBA.  All I could do was yell and cuss myself out before starting over. 

novella1186

mobride2015 said:

I did this SO MANY TIMES when I was working on my MBA.  All I could do was yell and cuss myself out before starting over. 

Yep, I threw some major tantrums and then took a deep breath and started over. I did my MBA too! 

novella1186

KnightsNurse said:

One of the girls on here said she used Google Docs as a backup for everything. I decided to start doing that and I'm so glad I did because I knew this is something I would wind up doing. Plus FI can easily edit stuff like the guest list from his computer when I share with him. Sorry you lost it That's one of the worst feelings...

Google Docs is awesome for that reason! I had the wrong OS or something like that, so it wouldn't load right, so I couldn't use it with a certain computer. But yeah it's a really good idea. 

emmaaa

I should have definitely used Google Docs...lesson learned. My computer teacher in middle school always said, "Save early, save  often" but it didn't help me in this case.

Thank you for those of you who suggested right-clicking and restoring previous versions, but it says none are available...worth a shot!

novella1186

emmaaa said:

I should have definitely used Google Docs...lesson learned. My computer teacher in middle school always said, "Save early, save  often" but it didn't help me in this case.

Thank you for those of you who suggested right-clicking and restoring previous versions, but it says none are available...worth a shot!

Damn. I am sorry. And I know you said losing a resume would be worse but I did not tell that little anecdote to undermine how crappy it is to lose a wedding invitation! I think the invitation is worse because you worked so hard on it and had to be creative. The resume was mostly just remember all my past crappy jobs lol. 

emmaaa

novella1186 said:

emmaaa said:

I should have definitely used Google Docs...lesson learned. My computer teacher in middle school always said, "Save early, save  often" but it didn't help me in this case.

Thank you for those of you who suggested right-clicking and restoring previous versions, but it says none are available...worth a shot!

Damn. I am sorry. And I know you said losing a resume would be worse but I did not tell that little anecdote to undermine how crappy it is to lose a wedding invitation! I think the invitation is worse because you worked so hard on it and had to be creative. The resume was mostly just remember all my past crappy jobs lol. 

I HOPE, hope, that it will be easier this time around. Luckily the RSVP card and reception card are really easy too.

I appreciate it! I think any work lost is just very sad and disheartening, haha

IrishPirate60

Look in the "temp" file on your PC. My computer sometimes flakes on me and makes stuff disappear. Every now and then I find it in the temp folder.

theartistformerlyknownas

All MS programs save automatically for auto-recover, even if you click don't save. Go into Publisher, and go to File > Options > Save. There should be a line showing the folder they save to. Copy that location, paste into Windows Explorer, and you should find past versions there.

beethery

lolo883 said:

All MS programs save automatically for auto-recover, even if you click don't save. Go into Publisher, and go to File > Options > Save. There should be a line showing the folder they save to. Copy that location, paste into Windows Explorer, and you should find past versions there.

Do this.

Also if you need help throwing design shit together lemme knooooow.

levieenrose

Ahhhh! Yikes! 

One other thought to add: when removing a flash/thumb/whatever drive from your computer, ALWAYS safely remove it. I lost massive changes to a draft of a 60 page thesis that way. That was a few years ago, and I have never been so foolish again. My colleagues thought I was seriously batty when they would start to just yank those things out and I would flip.  

larrygaga

Also, google drive, USBs and other external storage devices are your friends. Back everything up several times if you don't want to lose it. 

emmaaa

lolo883 said:

All MS programs save automatically for auto-recover, even if you click don't save. Go into Publisher, and go to File > Options > Save. There should be a line showing the folder they save to. Copy that location, paste into Windows Explorer, and you should find past versions there.

For some reason it doesn't show the location they save to? Weird.

theartistformerlyknownas

emmaaa said:

lolo883 said:

All MS programs save automatically for auto-recover, even if you click don't save. Go into Publisher, and go to File > Options > Save. There should be a line showing the folder they save to. Copy that location, paste into Windows Explorer, and you should find past versions there.

For some reason it doesn't show the location they save to? Weird.

See where excel or word saves to cuz I know they show it. Go to that folder then one level up, and see if there's a folder for publisher.