Loss of data caused by operator error

As I've gone through life (post-computers), I have often wondered why there was no system available to prevent a loss of data (say, in a Word file) caused by doing something silly - I've seen it happen too often.

Best example is closing a document and you get teh question: "Do you want to save the changes - you know, teh ones you just spent 3 hours on?" Well, of course you do, but just before you hit the Yes button you think, "Oh, I forgot to put in ..." So instead of saying Yes, you say No (meaning, no, I want to go back and do some more before I leave this document). Good bye 3 hours of work!!! :cry

I haven't done it for a while, but I have done it, and I usually learn my lesson - which last for about a year, on average.

You can also do it by forgetting which of the documents you had open that you are now closing - you might have two versions of the one document open, for eg. Or maybe you save one document over another without realising what you're doing. There is also teh possibility that one is just plain computer illiterate and gets thrown by this stuff - my octogenarian mother, writing her memoirs, for example.

Well, I'd thought about writing to MS about this, but didn't think they'd be interested. So I wrote to Open Office instead. Instead of offering to fix the problem, I just got (mildly) insulted. It's my fault if I do that, so don't bother us with it, was the idea.

I just wondered how widespread this was - or is it just an Aussie thing? People I work with do it occasionally too.

I did have a couple of suggested solutions, like saving what you do for a while (I mentioned that you usually realise what you've done within about 3 nanoseconds), with an option not to if you're confident you won't mess up.
I also suggested the computer keeping track of what you're doing and, if you're about to do something that would kill 3 hours of work, bring up a second panel that says, "Are you sure you want to do that? - you're about to kill 3 hours of work you just did!"

Tell me I'm not an idiot (he didn't say that) and that this would be a good thing. Anybody?

 

Sounds like vistas intrusive UAC for MS office... Best practice, in my opinion, is if youre working on a document for 3 hours, you should be saving it periodically anyway. that way, in case you do make that mistake, youre not completely screwed.

 

Quite right KS, one should. But wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to remember things like that. Computers are good for a lot of things, and they could be easily set up to help with this too. There are already lots of other helps of this type - questions like, "Are you sure you want to do this?" Even the thing I'm talking about is an example - if you close a file and you've forgotten to save it, it asks you what you want to do.
Computers are getting better all the time - why don't we make them do what we want, especially if it would help us avoid wasting hours of work?
Survey question: Have you ever done it?

 

it would be nice if the user had that choice and were able to turn the option on and off if the user chose. i would assume that would be the case, as it is with vistas UAC. that was the first thing i turned off when i got a vista machine.

ive never lost a document, but i have had some scares. undo is great.

 

Turned UAC off here too on Vista PC.

OK, that's one for and one against (not counting people I work with).

 

Without sounding obnoxious, that's part of the reason I dumped Office by the side of the road like an unwanted dog, and moved to Jarte, because it's so much easier to work with, plus it'll let you set up an auto save for every minute, plus it's got a backup function, so you've always got at least one copy.

I haven't lost any documents to that particular problem since making the change.

 

Haven't heard of Jarte. How does it differ from Office - doesn't Office have Autosave every minute (minimum) and a backup function?

 

thats a good idea.

 

I've always used Autosave, but neither that nor saving a backup solves my problem as far as I know. In the example I gave, if I say No, I don't want to save changes (when really I should press cancel), I don't seem to have an Autosaved version. I think it disappears when the Save is done. And you don't get a backup until you save.

I have partially solved the problem by using Google Desktop. That saves and stores as you go along, so you can go back and see what you've done. The only disadvantage is that teh saved version is not formatted - it's just a continuous bunch of text with an occasional paragraph.

 

Alright, what I mean by autosave is that it saves a version every minute. There is no three hours since your last save. 20 minutes is the largest increment and the latest version saves the backups in a completely different folder so you can't accidentally write over them.

www.Jarte.com that explains it better than I could ever.

 

Thanks guys.
Halo, that second link is all about exactly what I'm talking about. This is the first paragraph from it:

The only thing I would add is, it's not just imprudence, laziness or folly. Sometimes I'm working on a document until three in the morning. You can get a bit tired and hazy by that time. And you can do the wrong thing. And then there's my octogenarian mother that I already mentioned. She's not computer savvy, but she tries, and there is no protection if she makes a mistake.

The fact that there's an article about this seems to prove my point. The article says that the only way to be sure is to continually do manual saves. It also says what I said - Autosave files disappear as soon as you save your document (how easy would it be to leave them around for a day?) and Backup only saves when you save, and it only saves the previously saved version, not the current one.

There is a bit of software mentioned at the end of teh article that you can get to remind you to save or to do saves for you, but as it says:

Again, the fact that there is software available to help with this suggests that it is a problem.

The puzzling thing for me is that it would seem very simple to overcome this problem (I made suggestions earlier, and I can add the option of keeping Autosave info temporarily), but Open Office isn't even prepared to look at it, and I doubt that MSFT would be interested. If they would just fix it, we could all relax and go about the business of using the software without having to continually remembering to save. It just seems nuts to me.

Word and Writer also have Autosave that will do a save every minute, and will create a backup. Interesting that Jarte will save into a different folder though. That would be an improvement. Does it also preserve your Autosave info after you close the file? And what is backed up? Is it the same system as Word?

I had a look at the Jarte link (thankyou), and while it looks good, I don't think it would do me personally. I spend most of my time writing reports of up to 10 000 words with photos, tables and drawings included. It could be good for some though, so I'll keep it in mind.

PS Thanks for the tip on Google Desktop Halo. At the moment though, the risk of losing data seems greater than the security risk.

 

Thanks Becks81, but I think my problem is a little different from that which is solved by the program you mentioned (although it's a little hard to tell exactly what it does - interesting description!) I am trying to avoid having to remember to save my work every 10 minutes or so when I'm working on a large document. Does it address that issue?

 

Or you can use AbiWord and set it to auto-save every five minutes, just in case.. :innocent

 

Thanks Mimsy. I had a look at it, and it's the best suggestion yet. It keeps a backup of the file you are working on at the time interval you choose and with a file-type suffix you can choose. It's also pretty light on memory. The only problem is, as far as I can tell, it deletes the backup as soon as you exit from the document. That's the time I was hoping it would be there. You would think it would only be a minor change to get it to hang around for 5 minutes, or a day, or whatever. Anyway, it looks like a good tool for some people - my mum, for example.