Anyone else have problems with vanishing footnotes?

I just filed bug 69445. Anyone know of this, or have a way of saving the situation? I know it’s very unlikely but this is a very serious bug for me so I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask…

Here’s the problem:

The short version is that all my footnotes were gone when I re-opened a file. The actual superscript numbers were present in the main body of the text, as were the footnote numbers at the bottom of the page, but all actual contents of the footnotes were gone. There were 212 footnotes. I have a lot of work ahead of me… (The page numbers were gone as well, but I don’t really care about those too much!)

I do note that one footnote survived. I think it may have been in a different style than all the others. It was simply “footnote”, whereas I think all the others were “footnote text”. I can’t check since (multiple) earlier versions of the file have the same problem.

The file began life as a .docx created by Word (2007, I think, but it might have been 2010) on a Windows 7 box. I then worked on it using LO 4.0.5 on Windows 8 (I know, I know!). At some point I upgraded to LO 4.1.1.2 and continued to work on it. I’m pretty certain that once I upgraded to LO 4.1.1.2 I kept the program open (i.e. overnight) while I worked on it, and it wasn’t until I closed the program and re-opened the files that the footnotes were gone. I was very, very sad.

The .docx file is not openable at all in Word (or by Gmail’s “view document” feature). I was able to get a version that could be opened in Word by saving it as an .odt and then as a .doc (not .docx), but the footnotes of course were still gone. The original .docx can create a working PDF, but the footnotes aren’t there.

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I’m adding a bit of info I added to the bug report. As I mentioned, the file cannot be opened in Word, but it gives the following error message:

A document must contain exactly one root element.

Location: Part: /word/document.xml, Line: 2, Column: 134498

Earlier versions of the same file (I had saved it multiple times over the course of working on it over several days) give the same error message, but identify a different “column”.

The safer is always save in native format ODF to work, and save in other formats to share if needed.
Have you activated the options: Menu/Tools/Options/Load&Save/ Save recovery or backup?
Are you sure that a saved was done before close the program? See file date/time.

Search in the computer for files with same name and any extension.

Look in the file properties if there is a previous file version.

Search in the bin.

Open the file with a zip program, and look in the word folder, there is a footnotes.xml file, open it and look it missing footnotes are there, to verify there is not an issue opening the file.

Thanks for your answer. I’m very, very certain that the file was saved correctly, etc. I had worked on the file over a period of a few days. I saved multiple versions over the course of that span, and all now have that problem. Even saves from two days ago that I had opened and worked with, at the very least when I upgraded to 4.1.1.2.

I also usually work primarily in ODF when I can (native open formats is the primary reason I use LO!), but I started this document on my work computer, where I have no choice. I thought it might be safer to keep on working in .docx then switching back and forth. Whoops!

I tried opening the footnotes.xml – I didn’t know about that, but it only had the first footnote in it (which, as I mentioned, I think was in a different style than the others; I don’t know if that could possibly make a difference).

Thanks for your suggestions though.