lost everything

[andre]

I just lost my whole novel only because atlantis was sudenly not able to save anymore, thanks atlantis! I go back to word.

[Robert]

I just lost my whole novel only because atlantis was sudenly not able to save anymore, thanks atlantis! I go back to word.

Greetings--
1) Atlantis has an option to “safeguard documents every x minutes against system failure and crashes” (Tools | Options > Load/Save tab). When this option is on, Atlantis automatically creates Safe Copies of all open documents at the specified intervals. In the event of a fatal crash or accidental shutdown of your computer, Atlantis is always able to restore your documents from these Safe Copies. Did you have this option checked on your system? It is on by default when Atlantis is installed.

2) Atlantis has an automatic backup feature (Tools | Options > Load/Save tab > Backup Files… button). In this “Backup Files” dialog, you can ask Atlantis to backup the documents you are working on every minute if need be. There is no limit to the number of backups that Atlantis can make in this way, except for the size of your hard disk and the amount of disk space that you chose to assign to Atlantis backups.

3) In Atlantis, you can also make manual backups at any convenient time, if desired (File | Save Special | Save to Backups).

So, not only your documents should never get “lost” with Atlantis, but you are able to come back to specific previous backup versions if desired.

Whatever happened to your novel has probably nothing to do with Atlantis. Also, unless you give us more specific details about what exactly happened on your system, we won’t be able to help you recover your novel, if at all possible. If you want to keep specific details private, send them directly to comments@rssol.com. We will do our utmost to try to help you with this problem. But from the tone of your posting, it would seem that you do not really want to be helped…
--
Cheers
Robert

[Guest]

You never backed up to floppy or anything!? You didn't even use the auto back-up feature!! Boy, if you couldn't see the consequeces of that, I can't imagine you can construct much of a plot! I wouldn't blame Atlantis for this as every software can fail from time to time. This is USER ERROR!!!

[Prince]

I send myself normally my stuff by mail before shutting down, using the server of gmx as a backup.

[BuffyBot]

I just lost my whole novel only because atlantis was sudenly not able to save anymore, thanks atlantis! I go back to word.

Maybe you should go back to word. The dancing paperclip will explain how to backup your work.

[andre]

I want to appologies to everybody and esspeically to to makers of Atlantis for my outburst. But I was very very sad of losing so much work that took me so much effort to create. I am not shure if I can ever recreate these lost pages and doing my best at this moment the rewrite them, it will, ofcourse, never be the same.

What happend was this: I wanted to quit Atlantis after having saved, but it asked me again: do you want to save? So I did. When quiting atlantis, again it asked me; do you want to save? For some reason the file didn´t got saved, and also the save icon didn´t turn grey when I saved.
My following idea was to copy all the text into memory and into a new document, but the moment I copied, Atlantis gave an address error message and the program closed by itself.

After opening it again, my textfile was 0 kb big and completely empty.

All the autosave and recoveroptions in Atlantis were turned on, but there was nothing saved or te get back.

Ofcourse I did make copies on a diskette many times, but the last one was a while ago, I had only 2 chapters left from which I have to start writing again.

Again, I am sorry for my initial rage, but I think anyone would react like this, and I think it stil is better then to keep it inside and then grow a cancer on later age.

André

[Robert]

I want to appologies to everybody and esspeically to to makers of Atlantis for my outburst. But I was very very sad of losing so much work that took me so much effort to create. I am not shure if I can ever recreate these lost pages and doing my best at this moment the rewrite them, it will, ofcourse, never be the same.

What happend was this: I wanted to quit Atlantis after having saved, but it asked me again: do you want to save? So I did. When quiting atlantis, again it asked me; do you want to save? For some reason the file didn´t got saved, and also the save icon didn´t turn grey when I saved.
My following idea was to copy all the text into memory and into a new document, but the moment I copied, Atlantis gave an address error message and the program closed by itself.

After opening it again, my textfile was 0 kb big and completely empty.

All the autosave and recoveroptions in Atlantis were turned on, but there was nothing saved or te get back.

Ofcourse I did make copies on a diskette many times, but the last one was a while ago, I had only 2 chapters left from which I have to start writing again.

Again, I am sorry for my initial rage, but I think anyone would react like this, and I think it stil is better then to keep it inside and then grow a cancer on later age.

André

Greetings--
Please, André, do not think that we are unmoved by your predicament. Of course, we are sorry that this should have happened to you and that you lost a lot of your work. What happened to you has never happened before to any Atlantis user. One of our developers will look into this from the technical point of view. But, please, do not be offended if I first give you a few words of advice:

1) No software or word processor on earth is absolutely failsafe, especially when they are running on systems that are no more absolutely failsafe than they are. Crashes or mishaps can happen, and will happen, even if very infrequently. So it is vital for every user of a computer to create backup copies of valued documents on their hard drives and on removable media too. The more you value your work, the more backups you should create, and store them in different places (against burglary or fire hazards for example). People who have valuable data to protect often place backup copies in safe-deposit boxes. As the saying goes, it is always better to be safe than sorry.

2) Obviously these backup copies have to be updated as often as possible. Always remember. Whatever hasn’t been backed up can be lost forever. In you case, I would systematically create backups of each new chapter. In Atlantis, you can select any new chapter (or fragment of document), right-click on the selection, then use the “Save Selection As…” command. Alternatively, you can select the new chapter, then press Ctrl+Shift+F12 on your keyboard. The current chapter can then be saved as a separate file. Of course, the main document itself can be saved normally and backed up manually or automatically.

3) Whenever a software starts going funny as apparently Atlantis did on your system, and you want to save your work, do as you did in the first place, i.e. copy the whole of your document to the Windows clipboard. Then, do not paste into the application that is having problems. Always paste into a third-party application, preferably a more “basic” application such as Windows WordPad or NotePad. You might lose some or all of the original formatting, but all chances are that you will save your document contents.

Alternatively, whenever the direct “Save” command will not work, you can try to use the “Save As…” command instead. It could unlock a compromised situation.

Also never close the “faulty” application until you are sure that your work has been saved one way or the other.

4) Sometimes documents cannot be saved or are not saved properly because the same document is open in 2 different applications simultaneously. This should be avoided, especially when you are editing documents.

5) Do not feel so despondent, maybe you will rewrite the lost chapters in an even better way, who knows? When you have published your novel, please let us know. I am sure that some of the Atlantis Forum users will be interested to have a read. Maybe you could post a sample chapter on the Atlantis Forum? Why not?
--
Cheers
Robert

[Andre]

Thanks, Robert for your understanding. I still must admit that I prefer Atlantis above many other wordprocessors, including word.

In case you and others are interessted, the first chapters of another novel on which I work on also at the same time, are on my webpage at

http://members.fortunecity.com/andremus ... iting.html

My updates there will be slowly, because I write in dutch, my own language, and translate it little by little into english, a very slow task, because my english is ofcourse not perfect.

Greetings,
André

[billybob]

Hello Andre:

Been there, done that... but never with Atlantis. I lost a big chunk of a manuscript using Word's Master Document feature (which I learned the hard way is dangerous and buggy).

I'm currently finishing a second novel using Atlantis, and it works very well for me. Robert gives some very good advice. Here's the system I use:

1. I write each chapter as a separate file, with minimum formatting, just using styles for chapter headings and manuscript text. No headers or footers. Each chapter is saved separately.

2. For manuscript-wide edting (searching and replacing text, etc.) I create my own "Master" document, by combining each individual chapter into a complete master file. As I finish a chapter, I add it to this master document, after saving it separately.

3. When it comes time to print, I load the Master document, apply headers and footers for page slugs (headers) and page numbering.

It's a lot of work, but it insures the integrity of the total work. If something horrible happens, only the current working chapter is in jeopardy.

I must say I have never lost anything while using Atlantis. I have had one lock up while printing (ALWAYS save prior to printing), but I blame that on the printer driver, not Atlantis.

I have requested RSSOL to add a "Master Document" feature in a future release, but one that works. I hope they have that on their list. RSSOL should take a look at the Master Document feature as implemented by WordPerfect or Lotus WordPro. It's a very handy feature for writers.

Again, Andre, sorry for the work you lost. Good luck in getting back up to speed.

[andre]

Hi Billybob!
as suggested, I saved all the chapters as a single document from both the novels I am working on. Feels much saver now! The master document way sounds good. Let´s see if it will be in atlantis in the future.

Losing a lot of work isn't a nice experience, yup...

André

[andre]

hi

[skyborn]

Yo! I went to the link showing some of your wirting, but have to say, that it was "Greek" to me. (It wasn't English for sure) Lets hope the finished work becomes a "best-seller" and gets translated into multiple languages.
skyborn

[Andremusic]

Hi Skyborn,
thanks for visiting my site. I wrote that post long time ago and it was a sad experience to lose the story, but everything came out great. My two books are published and I am working on my third now. Still, everything in Atlantis. I love this program and will never switch to another. I can't waiit to see what their next update will be!

Greetings,
André

[Ed Steele]

I too found have had a problem with Atlantis refusing to save work. My symptoms were similar to Andre. The auto-save did not function. The save icon did not grey out. At one point I got an output file with zero bytes.

I did find a work around however, so my work was not lost. Just took an extra hour. This has happened to me twice so far.

The creation process as follows: Running on Windows Vista Home basic w SP2. I opened an HTML file using Open Office and then did a copy and paste into Atlantis. I edited all of the fonts, removed residual graphics and then tried to save the results. Would not save. No error message. Just cycled continuously asking me to "save" when I tried to close the file. The autosave was enabled. Tried changing output file names and output folder. Nada. Then opened a new file and copied the contents of the still open Atlantis document into the new document. This solved the problem the first time it happened.

The second time, same procedure, same problem. This time the copy into new document didn't work. I solved the problem by copying portions of the problem document to the new document and test saving. I discovered that a single sentence in the middle of the problem document caused the problem. I could see nothing wrong with the sentence. I then copied it and inserted it. The entire document now "saved" - just took me an hour of trial and error.

[DoctorRob]

Andre, clicking on the link to your blog, I got an Error 404.

I fear our more technical friends may have neglected to mention the backup of backups, which is whisky. Scottish (just between us Europeans, American whisky is not so good!), single malt: Glenmorangie (for sweetness) or Langavulin (for that refreshing, smoky flavour). Ideally both. A library of Scottish whisky will never let you down.

Greetings from Wales, where I am enjoying a glass of Dutch Advocaat.

Rob

[mhender668]

My system reset while I was away (I think because of some HP program that likes to restart the computer once in a while) and I lost part of a document. The backup file was full (I don't know why it does not continually replace old backups) and the feature to save in the event of a crash did not work for that document (although it did for another)

Is there a way to get the one I lost back?

[admin]

I lost part of a document.

Do you mean that the document file is cut-off, or it simply does not reflect the latest changes you have made to it?

The backup file was full

Do you mean that the Backup Files folder of Atlantis reached its size limit?

Please choose the "Tools | Options..." menu command, and click the "Backup Files..." button on the "Load / Save" tab. Is the "Back up every" box checked?

Please choose the "Tools | Options..." menu command, and click the "Optional Messages..." button on the "General" tab. Is the "Your backup folder has reached its size limit..." item checked?

[mhender668]

Took me a while to figure out what it was doing, but I still don't know why it didn't restore.

The backup and safeguard were checked. As I mentioned, one of the documents I had open at the time was restored, the other not.

The backup folder was set to C:\Program Files\Atlantis\Backup, and I had selected the option to create a separate folder for each document.

There was a backup folder for the document that didn't restore

I noticed, though, that they were from March. No November files. That led me to believe that it got full and that backup did not overwrite the files for some reason.

I did a search using windows explorer, and it showed November documents to have been stored in the folder for the document at C:\Program Files\Atlantis\Backup

Atlantis did not show them there, but only the March docs (i.e., versions of the document saved as backups in March, max of 10)

I did a search of the other document (the one that was restored) and it showed it as being backed up in C:\Users\Mike\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Atlantis\Backup

(Don't know where this came from)

So, I'm guessing at the time I lost my changes to the doc in question that there was a backup there. I reopened the file, however, to see whether I had lost any work, and (like a bonehead) I told it to delete backups because I thought the backup folder at C:\Program Files\Atlantis\Backup was full.

So, I believe that somewhere is the file I need that had been deleted when I deleted backups, or overwritten as the file subsequently saved backups.

I can't figure out why they save to the funny directory.

Is there a way to find the file?

[Robert]

Hi Mike,
The funny directory is Windows Vista or Windows 7 looking after your “security”. Please see “Common file and registry virtualization issues in Windows Vista or in Windows 7” at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927387/en-us, —and the Atlantis Betatesting News at http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en ... _5_008.htm.

Now have you looked in your Recycle Bin?

Otherwise, you might want to try your luck with “Recuva” (http://www.piriform.com/recuva). Here is from the site:

Accidentally deleted an important file? Lost something important when your computer crashed? No problem! Recuva recovers files deleted from your Windows computer, Recycle Bin, digital camera card, or MP3 player. And it's free!

HTH.
Cheers,
Robert

[mhender668]

Nothing in recycle bin and Recuva could not find the file.

Thanks, I'll look at those other things