all documents went blank today

[mistrasparta]

I am a historian. I have been using LibreOffice for years, maybe 15 or so.

I have been working on a scholarly paper. When I pulled it up today it was blank, although I save constantly & have an automatic save.

Every saved paper I have pulled up to look at is blank.

I use LO 6.1 on a Windows 10 machine.

The particular paper with which I am concerned is 30 pages. It swallowed words from a variety of documents from one page to 80.

I have written and published 3 books & 20+ articles in LO so I have felt reasonably competent with it.

When I save things myself, it is every page, and often every new change.

I tried turning off the machine & letting it sit for a while. When I turned it back on, there seemed to be no problem with any pages, except with the 8 that had been in the original LO screen when I first pulled it up. So I cannot get back the pages on those, but everything else is all right.

[ajlittoz]

View>Formatting Marks

If this displays paragraph marks at random positions, then you may have a problem with font colour.

[Cookievore]

Hello, although you’re a historian but also a longtime fellow of LO, you could at least have mentioned the OS and the LO version on which you experience this strange behaviour. How should anyone be able to assist without that? This is not a known issue so far. Also little more information on the before and after save / open, e.g. file size, file type (native / alien), would help to narrow it down.

How should automatic save help in your opinion in this case? Saving again and again to the same file? Hm. Once the file gets corrupted, you’ll overwrite a probably functional file with the corrupt one. So, benefit of autosave and constantly saving manually has limited value.Due to autosave this may happen even without your intend.

Any more details please, that would enable others to get an idea of how to help?

[Cookievore]

I’ve read your update now several times but I’m not able to make a tail of what you write.

First ‘all documents went blank’ (headline), then it’s a ‘particular paper’, then you’re writing of ‘papers’ as if you mean documents (files), then it’s a (only one) paper of 30 pages that swallowed w o r d s from several d o c u m e n t s over 80 pages, then no problems except with the 8 … 8 what? pages, documents, screens, words? and where does the 8 come from? remember ‘all documents went blank’ … on original LO screen … what? …

I’m not a native english speaker. Maybe I’m missing the point and someone else can follow your description. But I’ve the strong impression that you’re mixing up terms very much. Please consider to upload screenshots that clarify what you are talking about.

Also you should try what @ajlittoz suggested and report back.

[mistrasparta]

Sorry for the omission. I had already filled it out on two screens previous to this.

I use LO 6.1 on a Windows 10 machine.

The particular paper with which I am concerned is 30 pages. It swallowed words from a variety of documents from one page to 80.

I have written and published 3 books & 20+ articles in LO so I have felt reasonably competent with it.

I understand nothing of what you say about automatic saving, other than that is a worthless effort.

When I save things myself, it is every page, and often every new change.

[ajlittoz]

This has nothing to do with a solution to the problem. Please transfer all this additional data into your question. Use the edit command below your question. This delete this “answer”.

The reason is: this is no forum but a Q&A site. Answers get reordered by the site engine and you lose temporal sequence.