[Linda K.]

I have just enough computer knowledge to get myself in trouble, however my 71 year old writer friend counts on me to help her. She is currently writing a book and has acquired a computer I have yet to see. She also works almost exclusively in WordPerfect. Yesterday she was on approximately page 140 and had not saved for at least 30 pages. And then the cat came to visit and tiptoed across the keyboard....and all was lost. To know it is to understand her situation. While she is a writer, she cannot follow directions solely from the written word. She uses her computer as a typewriter and not much more. And the biggy - she lives on a farm in BC's East Kootenay mountains. She is 80 kms from the nearest community with any help. I of course now live in Ontario. Mostly I have been able to help her through her problems using phone calls, followed by emails with VERY basic instructions and links. I have no idea how to help her and she is not capable of participating or posting in forums. I guess my first question is, is there any chance of recovery?
She has unfortunately rebooted since then. If it might be possible, what do I need to know to walk her through it?

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If WordPerfect has its own autosave feature (which it probably does) then just open the document again and see what comes back.
Failing this the only viable option is to type the work again. Sorry.

[Neil Jones]

If WordPerfect has its own autosave feature (which it probably does) then just open the document again and see what comes back.
Failing this the only viable option is to type the work again. Sorry.

[Samm]

Welcome to G2G Linda K,

This is a bit of a long shot but it's about the only thing I can think of:

Word Perfect has an automatic backup feature where a backup copy of the file you are working on is automatically saved into a system folder every 10 mins. Whether your friend has this feature enabled or not is another matter. I'm afraid I don't know whether it is enabled by default or not so we'll just have to hope that it is!

The following instructions assume that the system folder used for backups is the default one (which it probably will be as it sounds like she wouldn't have known how to move it anyway!)

These instructions are for windows 2000/XP:

Open My Computer.
Click on the Tools menu & select Folder options. In folder options, click the 'View' tab.
Scroll down the list of settings until you see one called 'Show hidden files & folders'. Enable this setting by clicking on the radio button next to it. When enabled, it will look like this:

Click OK

Next, open the following folders:
Documents & settings -> [User name] ->Application data -> Corel -> Wordperfect -> 12 -> Backup

NB [user name] is the folder that has the same name as her logon (or profile) name.
The folder '12' is the version number of Wordperfect, so this may be a different number such as 10 for example.

In the backup folder there should be a list of files which alphanumeric names. Once this folder is open, click on the 'View' menu & select 'details'. This should then show the dates next to each file.

Locate the file with the relevant date (i.e. the date that the incident occured) and open it in Wordperfect.

[Linda K.]

Thanks from this side of the pond Samm for your suggestions and the detailed help! As Neil suggested his was the first thing that we tried without success. On Monday we will have a go with yours.