There have been a lot of swings and roundabouts this week, so I can’t actually say I enjoyed most of it. Slow progress on several fronts but an absolute disaster on others. I managed to clear two massive disruptions on Thursday, one from Microsoft Word, who somehow managed to jumble all my book files for the WIP, and the other from our Bank.
I can honestly say that neither of these messes was due to an aged blogger having forgotten how things work. I am getting good at recognizing these!
Microsoft Word.
All I wanted to do was add my latest chapter to the existing file, save it, and move on. That’s when I noticed that I suddenly had multiple copies of all my files scattered throughout the list. After the initial shock, I wondered what to do.
I have learned from experience that simply deleting the new arrivals would probably delete everything, so I stayed away from the delete button. After a thorough search, I discovered that some of the contents of these files had been corrupted too. Parts of one chapter had turned up in another chapter. This was when I almost lost my sanity. How was I supposed to put this right?
I have a master copy of this file on OneDrive, so I had a quick peek just to see if the trouble had found its way there. Joy upon joy, it hadn’t. Everything was as it should be, just not the latest chapter.
One way or another, I managed to sort everything out and breathed one huge sigh of relief. Then I wondered if it was time I moved to Scrivener?
The Bank
This problem stemmed from the fact that our Bank, in its infinite wisdom, has recently changed how it presents our statements. So when I turned up to do our monthly audit, nothing looked familiar or made any sense to Moi.
Some people rely on their Bank to handle everything, but I’m the cautious sort and don’t trust anything on faith when it comes to our money, so I keep an account book. This book is then regularly checked every month against the bank statements. They usually match, but occasionally it doesn’t, and I have to nail it down. This time wasn’t so easy, as they have shortened the time you can browse, and they kept closing down. In the end, I had to print out the relevant statement and work on it offline.
These two jobs took most of Thursday, so now you know why I was among the missing!
Full moon madness is about. That’s really weird what happened with your Word docs. I always have copies in One drive, my documents and Dropbox – just for such occasions. 🙂 Glad you sorted it out. The bank, ha! The bank is the only service that I insist on still getting paper copies. I scan it every month. Trust nobody. 🙂 xx
You cannot rely on anything anymore. I seem to spend my life keeping check on everything…
I hear you! 🙂
Sounds like Thursday was very frustrating. So glad you could sort out your Word problem.
There always seems to be something. See days, John…
If it isn’t one thing it’s another.
and if you’re really lucky, several of them…
😁
I have copies of my books on my PC, external hard drive and Google docs. I lost several chapters once. It gave me heartache, so I determined never to let that happen again.
And why do people (like banks) think it’s a good idea to change a perfectly workable system. Mailerlite is now changing to a new version, they tell me. Nothing wrong with the old system that I can see. It works just fine. I bet it takes me months to fathom out the new one!
We live in a constantly changing world, Vivienne… and I dont like it at all…
Glad you got it all sorted. I would, however, caution you about Scrivner. A writer friend of mine lost her almost completed manuscript with Scrivner, never to be found. She had to start writing the book all over again! Now she didn’t save it anywhere else because they said she would never lose it with them. Well, she did and they couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything about it. So beware!
Not to worry, Darlene… I have tried several times, but can’t get the hang of it… 💕