I'm in the depths of despair.

[lettered]

My Word docs keep getting . . . corrupted somehow. I'll save a file, and when I go to open it again, both the top and bottom have a lot of extra text that mostly seems to be about what directory the file was saved in. All the italics (and other kids of formatting) are lost. And worst of all, it's as if the text's been chopped up into chunks--sometimes cutting sentences or words in half--and then tossed like a salad, so that I have to try to figure out how everything fits together again. And some things are lost entirely. . . especially if I had the file saved, then went back in and changed a couple words, saved it again--even if I rename the file after the little tweaks. It's been going on for a while with a random file here and there, but lately it's been getting worse, doing it with every single file.

Has anyone ever experienced anything like this? Does it sounds like a Word problem, or is it my computer, is it a virus? Any advice?

It's fucked up three fics so far, and one I'm not sure I can put back together again.

Also, every once in a while my keyboard just stops working. Everything else will work, but the keyboard is completely crapped out. When I reset the computer, everything works fine.

Comments

[astridv.livejournal.com]

Have you scanned for viruses and trojans?

[ba4ever.livejournal.com]

Hmm, fortunately has never happened to me. But perhaps a virus? Do you do regular scans?

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

You know that Word is saving my doc with that weird crap at that bottom that basically lists all the internal formatting stuff but the rest is fine.

I hate computers.

[moss6886.livejournal.com]

Aw, honey.

I do NOT pretend to be an expert on such stuff, but the last time I saw something like your doc problems, it was a bad spot on the disc. Depending on your version of Windows, Accessories-System Tools-ScanDisk (if you're pre WinXP), or the errorchecking tool on the Tools tab under your hard drive Properties option (XP & maybe ME), should tell you if that's the case and possibly isolate the bad section. (They'll take a while to run.) Your files may be FUBARed, though you could try saving them to a different directory.

Hopefully, the keyboard problem is a separate issue and your keyboard is just dying or the connection has jogged loose. If none of this helps, you may very well be looking at a virus problem, but I've never encountered a serious virus before so that's not something I have any suggestions for.

Good luck!

[rahirah]

Um...I hate to say it, but if it's not a virus or trojan, your hard drive might be getting wonky and corrupting your files. I would save anything valuable to disk or upload it to a website or something immediately, just in case.

[entrenous88.livejournal.com]

Ack, so sorry you're having this problem! It's awful losing work.

I'd suggest a back-up of saving work to your LJ (you can mark it private) or to a community LJ of which you're the only member/maintainer. I have a community like that, created in part during my last job so that I could save things while I was at work. But it's great as a resource for backing up fic files as well.

[imnotacommittee.livejournal.com]

When Word messes up, it's never a fun thing!

How is it now?

Bad computer! No upgrade!

[alleynyc.livejournal.com]

Came across the following the other day at work. Maybe it will help:

http://word.mvps.org/faqs/apperrors/CorruptDoc.htm