Saved over document

[RetroGamer]

I was writing a long document in Writer and I wanted to delete one line so I triple clicked on it and then pressed Ctrl+S to save. To my horror I saw it take a few seconds to delete everything and then save. It turned out I had the whole thing selected, not just that one line. My last back up of it was a few thousand words ago. If the computer crashed I could just use the recovery thing but in this case the blank document actually saved over it. Is there anything in Writer or Windows 7 that can help me recover my old document?

I already checked the LibreOffice backup folder and it’s empty. I guess it only works if program closes without saving first. I tried right clicking the file and looking for a previous version but there was none. I know Writer auto-saves every few minutes so is there any way to access the auto save even when I’ve already saved? Or is there anything else I can do?

[carnendil]

Even if you had deleted everything by mistake and then saved the document, as long as you didn’t close the program, you should be able to “un-do” the previous action with Ctrl + Z (or menu Edit > Undo, or the corresponding button on the toolbar).

ROSt52’s answer contains very good previsory advice for those cases where you lost the chance to simply revert one or more changes.

[dajare]

Yep – it could have been “CTRL-Z” (“undo”) to the rescue in just about any OS, even after the CTRL-S… Pretty traumatizing for OP.

[ROSt53]

@dajare - Thanks for the hint that ctrl+z works even after ctrl+s. That the file must stay open is understood.

[ROSt53]

To be honest with you, it doesn’t look good.

1 - Have a look at tools / options / load&save / general if there is “Always create backup copy” checked. If so, read in the manual about this function.

2 - Do you have a backup copy of your hard disc? I recommend to do this regularly.

3 - I always create daily backup copies of important files. I just add the date at the end; format yymmdd. Sometimes I even add the time after the date hhmm. You might be able to use also the “version” function in Writer. For this please refer to the manual as I do my own versions with date & time]

I am sorry to have no better advice!