Pages Disappear while Typing

Question

I had some very helpful comments on this subject from Jay Freedman in response to my earlier post.  What was happening to my Word 2010 document was that pages into which I had typed text suddenly disappeared.  Jay was helpful in getting me to where I can save documents to two locations.  For some reason, when Word eliminated my pages, the saved copy also had the pages eliminated, so I was without a good backup.

In working in this document since, the same problem has recurred repeatedly.  What happens is that the two columns of text which I have been typing suddenly appear as one column down the lefthand side of the page.  I went to View to learn that this is the Draft version of the document instead of the Printed View.  Why it occurs, I have no idea.  But, when it occurs, the pages are already lost.

I have notieced that this shift to a Draft view seems to be occurring when I am typing at the bottom of the first column of text, and when text then goes to the top of the second column (I don't know if this is really relevent or not).  I have read the document into my Word 2000 software, and I have not experienced any of these problems there.

I am curious whether anyone else has run into this before.

Gordon

Houston, Texas

Answer 1

You do not have to select View to choose Draft view. The status bar (to the left of the Zoom slider) has buttons to change views.

Answer 2

Madame --

Theoretically, the pages should not be deleted in Normal view, but I am only able to retrieve (in Normal view) the first three pages of text and graphs. I am wondering if my Word 2010 could be corrupted. I do the Windows Updates to Office as they occur, but it doesn't appear that anyone else is having this problem.

I looked at the document in Normal view in Word 2000, and as you noted only the frames show up; pictures without frames are not there. I noted that Figure 2 preceded Figure 1 - a common problem that I run into when moving graphs around on the page. But, they appear correct when viewed in the Print Document view.

When I used Word 2000 extensively for such documents, I recall that when I couldn't place a graph on a page with other graphs without problems, I beleive that it may very well have been you that told me to check their ordering in Normal view. By re-ordering the appearance of the graphs in Normal view, I usually solved my problem. I suppose that I could go back to the Word 2000 document and encapsulate the two pictures within frames (another advantage for using frames?) to see whether they are in the correct order.

Is it possible that Word 2010 is less tolerant about the ordering of graphs than Word 2000? In other words, if Figures 3 and 4 are not in the proper order when viewed in the Draft view (I guess that I would have to convert them to frames first), could this possibly confuse Word 2010? I do remember printing documents in Word 2000 when the graphs were not in order (but only in the Normal view), but the documents printed without a problem.

To hit the Drafts tab in 2010, I would first have to open the View tab, and I only use this when adjusting page breaks. Hence, I don't think that a manual error is the cause.

Regardless, as always, I thank you for your quick response and helpful comments.

Gordon

Answer 3

If your document is spontaneously shifting from Print Layout to Draft view, then there is a mysterious problem, but could it be that you're inadvertently clicking on the Draft icon on the status bar? In any case, switching to Draft view doesn't actually delete any content, but content that is not In Line With Text (and that includes text in text boxes) is not displayed, and columns are shown as a single column. This is no different from Normal view in Word 2000, though Draft  in Word 2010 is even less WYSIWYG in some ways. For example, pictures, even if they are In Line With Text, are not displayed, and Word doesn't even display a "placeholder" (empty rectangle)--just an empty space.