Copy/Pasting an IM Ruined a Document!

[Philippe Cordier]

Maybe I should have ended that with a "?" rather than a "!", but if one didn't cause another, it was a strange coincidence.

Earlier today, I saw I had an IM.  Since I didn't have the time to read it carefully at the moment, I decided to copy and paste the message into a Word document.  I looked in vain for a "print" feature somewhere on the IM page, but there was no print feature, which I sometimes have used in the past.  i.e., I have sometimes copied and pasted text from the "Print" page to avoid copying and pasting all the html stuff (or whatever).

Since there was no "Print" feature (which seems strange as it is, and I think I'd noticed that in the past, too), I decided to just highlight the text of the message (i.e., I didn't highlight anything that didn't have to be copied, such as Subject Heading, etc.).

I then pasted this into a Word document.  At the same time, I had a file open on my computer.  It was a lengthy file of Miscellaneous information -- credit card numbers and dates for quick reference, a To Do list, personal contact information, notes to myself, etc.  This wasn't a Word document but rather a Wordpad document that I just keep on my computer "Desktop."

After pasting the IM text into a new Word document, I went back to my Wordpad file, which had been fine before.  I hadn't added or changed it in any way today.  Now, however, the file was suddenly frozen.  I couldn't type a new message in it or even move the cursor in the document.

I tried closing and reopening the document.  This time, the file took forever to open instead of just opening instantaneously as it always does.

As I scrolled down, I discovered that the bottom 90 percent of the document was gone, replaced by some odd looking back slashes (i.e., they didn't even look like normal backslashes, but were sort of wavy).

Immediately before these backslashes, and in the middle of my notes which were now cut off, was this strange message:

FHYPERLINK "../Indexes/timeline.html"


Tonight I called the university tech desk, and they said the file had somehow become corrupted.  To my dismay, they said there is no way to recover it.  I find that difficult to believe since we hear so much about how nothing is ever really gone from your computer no matter how you try to delete it.

Anyway, the moral of my story is a warning, I guess, not to copy and paste text from the html versions of the pages on this site!

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I looked in vain for a "print" feature somewhere on the IM page

I don't honestly remember there being a print feature for IMs - only posts. I think the only way to print an IM would be to print the entire Web page with your browser's print feature.

Immediately before these backslashes, and in the middle of my notes which were now cut off, was this strange message:

FHYPERLINK "../Indexes/timeline.html"


Tonight I called the university tech desk, and they said the file had somehow become corrupted.  To my dismay, they said there is no way to recover it.  I find that difficult to believe since we hear so much about how nothing is ever really gone from your computer no matter how you try to delete it.

Anyway, the moral of my story is a warning, I guess, not to copy and paste text from the html versions of the pages on this site!

How weird. But somehow I doubt copying text from the forum or even any other Web site could do what you describe happened to your file. For one, any text copied from a Web page turns into simple text once it's sent to the Windows clipboard. About the only ASCII control character that would be there would be the codes for simple line breaks. Secondly, there's no such file in any of the forum's Web space as "timeline.html" or any directory named "indexes." And lastly, an FHYPERLINK is a Windows ActiveX control, and there aren't any of those here on the forum because everthing having to do with the forum is controlled by PHP scripts that created simple XHTML files, nothing ActiveX - or even anywhere on the server the forum is hosted on because the server is running Linux, not any form of Windows.

I wish I had some explanation for you as to what might have happened, but the whole thing seems just too odd to me. 

But as for recovering your file, well, that all depends. Much of what is written on your hard drive is recoverable, but ONLY if it hasn't been written over by something else. There are a few different data recovery programs for Windows, but one that I happened to like when I used Windows is named GetDataBack, and you should be able to download a free trial copy of it here. (Try the NTFS version) A free trial should be all you'll need to check to see if copies of the file still exist on your hard drive and to recover them. 

Good luck! 

[Philippe Cordier]

Thank you, MB, for going through my problem so thoroughly.  You are (fill in the blank ______ your term of choice for a very kind, helpful person  )  Sorry if I blamed the board unfairly.

There probably hasn't been a print feature in the mailbox section, but it would be nice to have one.  As far as printing the regular screen, I haven't tried this since getting my own computer, but when I tried this in the past, the pages always came out blank.  (I have the same results trying to print out the "Look Inside This Book" feature on amazon.com.)

The loss of the document isn't the end of the world though distressing nevertheless; but I thank my lucky stars it wasn't any of the projects I'm working on that would have made this a crisis of greater proportion. Makes me worry about the erratic nature of computers ...