Suggestions very much appreciated, grrrr!

[chanter1944]

Anybody got a suggestion on how to roll back changes to a wordpad document you accidentally deleted a chunk of? I thought not saving changes would sort things, but evidently that isn't the case. I am not. happy. :(

No, I don't have a damnable backup. That would make too much sense.

Edited to add: I've been able to retrieve the most important bits of what I lost, thanks to having sent them to friends. I'm in the process of recreating the rest.

I'm also on the hunt for a word processor application that has a better backup feature than wordpad, doesn't stink for accessibility (looking at you, Libre Office), and doesn't have Google tentacles in it.

Comments

[sixbeforelunch]

No advice, I'm afraid, but all the sympathy. Losing work like that sucks. :(

[chanter1944]

*hugs* It sure does suck. At least I've been able to retrieve parts of it by fishing them out of messages I've sent to people. I'm recreating the rest.

[kengr]

Well, if you haven't closed it yet you could try ctrl-Z. But be careful, if you hit it one too many times There's not a "undo the undo" command.

Otherwise for the future check and see if Wordpad has a "make backup copies of the file every so often" option.

[chanter1944]

The bloody thing was undoing one character at a time, which... I have no idea. I did close it, and thought not saving changes would take care of whatever I'd initially done, but nope. Fortunately, I've been able to retrieve the important snippets I've sent to a couple friends, but I'm recreating the rest.

I'm also on the hunt for a word processor application that has a better backup feature than wordpad, doesn't stink for accessibility (looking at you, Libre Office), and doesn't have Google tentacles in it.

[kengr]

Accessibilty can be a real problem with almost anything. *sigh*

How much do you need an actual word processor as opposed to a text editor?

[chanter1944]

Text is much more of a concern than, say, fancy formatting, so a text editor... is probably fine? I'm so clueless on the differences here, it's embarrassing.

[kengr]

Ok, a text editor doesn't do fonts, styling (underlines, italics, bold, etc). It just lets you write strings of words. Most will spell check. And usually word wrap.

No justification or centering either.

But it will have search and replace (often better than word processors for some sorts of things)

My current go-to is TextPad. One nice feature is that you not only can have multiple files open at the same time, but there's an option on the search and replace that will let you apply it not just to all of the current file, but all of the currently *open* files. This is great when you have (say) a bunch of chapters open and want to change a name in all of them.

https://www.textpad.com/

[chanter1944]

Ooooooh. Thank you! This sounds very useful for most of what I do. I can always use something else for the rare instances that I need to play with formatting, text colors, etc. I do have one story that involves multicolored ink (fridge and whiteboard notes), but that's one story over decades. :P

[kengr]

If it's for online, many things are *simple* html codes (or related code that just require changing angle brackets to square brackets or the like)

When I was writig on my Dana Wireless, I'd transfer the files to the PC (which put them in RTF format). I'd use a word processor to change them to HTML (though I've also got an RTF to HTML convertor, the word processor usually works better).

Then I'd edit out all the excess junk that the conversion had put in the HTML files.

That reduced the file size by 50%!!

Then I could upload the file to the sites (like LJ, DW and Big Closet) that wanted HTML and a few quick search and replaces would change the tags for other sites.

Once I got the hang of it, it was quite fast.

[kengr]

Oh yeah, you might try using a seperate backup program. The one I use (second copy) can do scheduled backups of a directory or files to another directory, and even keep several "generations" of backups (basically the backup copies have something added to indicate *which* backup they are). Haven't actually used that feature of it myself, but I recall it from the help and config files.

It also only copies files that have *changed* since the last backup, so if you only pointed it at your writing directories, it'd be pretty fast after the first run.

Not sure how many generations of a file it'll keep (I can look if you are interested, but you could do backups every 10 minutes if you wanted.

[chanter1944]

Ooooooh, says I! I'll need to look into this! Thank you!

[kengr]

http://www.secondcopy.com/

[chanter1944]

I now have a trial version of Second Copy on my laptop, though I have to tell you, it took sighted assistance to set up. Access issues with some of the graphics. It's working now, however, and thank you! :D

[kengr]

Sorry about the accessibility trouble, but at least setup is fairly straightforward. Also if you can get it setup the way you want before the trial period is over, it'll keep working even after that.

You only need to get the paid version to make changes after that

[chanter1944]

I've got it set up to copy files in folders I'm unlikely to ever change, so I should be entirely good. Thank you again! :D

[alexseanchai]

I am informed that Scrivener plays particularly poorly with screenreader software, which means I have possibly zero recommendations. Possibly one: I do not know enough about CryptPad to know whether it might meet your needs, but I do know it keeps being recced to me as the alternative to Google Docs for privacy-conscious people.

[chanter1944]

Hmmmm. I'll need to do some accessibility sniffing, but thank you for the rec. It looks intriguing, from the skim of the linked webpage I just did.

[stealthsystem]

Scrivener on Windows, I can't speak to, but Scrivener on Mac plays nicely. One of the few things that was designed for Windows but plays properly on a Mac

[alexseanchai]

I don't know which platform the person I was talking to uses. I do know Scrivener was not designed for Windows: the first Windows version was like four years after the first Mac version and I think it's only in the past couple years that the Windows version caught up to the Mac version in terms of features.

[chanter1944]

For the record, I'm a Windows gal.

[stealthsystem]

Okay. This isn't exactly a text-editor. It's meant to write code in, but it will let you write text to. You just need to tweak a setting so it stops putting line numbers in front of your lines.
It's called Notepad++

[chanter1944]

*intrigued* It's decent for accessibility, I take it?

[stealthsystem]

Absolutely. We've used it for years. It can also be closed without you llosing your work.
-Tanna