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!