Text Box Data Loss

Question

I have been working on a large amount of data contained within a few Text Boxes in a Word file.

I have been saving my work on regular bases but, unfortunately, without backup.

A few days ago, I opened the same document in Word to find that all the data within all the text boxes in this document have disappeared.

The rest of the document, 5+MB in size, containing mostly text and a few pictures, seems to be intact.

Is there any explanation and recovery options for this problem?

I use Word 2016 and Windows 10 x64 (v. 1607 August 2016).

Answer 1

Thank you very much.

I am afraid it is document corruption.  I have tried your suggestions.

I have installed Graham Mayor's add-in.  My first impression is that it works well and that I should get used to it.

One possibility I was hesitant to mention is that Word does not handle large documents very well.  My corrupt document is currently 324 pages and over 5 MB in size; it contains mostly text in English and Arabic with a small number of pictures and text boxes.

I have been editing it, adding and deleting contents, for a few years.

My experience with this particular document is that sometimes makes Word slow down or crash.  I also feel that Word is not very good at handling text boxes.

I am grateful for all your advice and in particular the add-in link.

Answer 2

See if the text is still present but formatted as hidden or in white color in the text boxes. If that is not the problem, then some sort of document corruption is a likely explanation. Try copying the document content, minus the final paragraph mark (¶), into a new, blank document; that procedure may restore the damaged structures.

To show/hide paragraph marks as well as other nonprinting marks, click the ¶ button on the Home tab.

As far as "registry cleaners" are concerned, my general advice is that you should avoid them. In my experience, that kind of software causes more problems than it fixes.

The "Always create backup copy" option creates a copy of the backed up document that represents is content one save operation ago. In other words, when you save your document the second time, the backup will be created and its content represents what was in the file the first time you saved.

For more backup options, you can use Windows File History. For Word, specifically, you can make use of MVP Graham Mayor's Save in two places add-in; see http://www.gmayor.com/SaveInTwoPlacesAddIn.htm.

Answer 3

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/profile/27f35a84-a786-45d0-a24a-a8db141d1905

Thank you very much Stefan.

The options mentioned in your reply have never been changed since the installation of Word 2016.

I checked them now and found them both selected.

The text in the 4 text boxes is still missing.

It has been deleted and not just hidden.

Could this have been caused by either Advanced SystemCare 9.x.x, 10 Beta  or CCleaner 2016 ?

I have already removed CCleaner 2016 because, despite it being a "Microsoft Gold Partner", I was unable to personalize its settings and in particular what it "cleans".

I also uninstalled Advanced SystemCare 10 Beta because I suspected that it made modifications to my system and application setup without my knowledge.

Now I am seriously thinking of removing ASC 9 as well.  I have been using ASC for years and found it useful as a system utility, but I am now more worried about the integrity of my data even if my system becomes slower.

I have now selected "Always create backup copy" but I can not see any backup copies of the word documents that I have opened or created after making this selection.

I have started to copy the newly created text from the boxes to outside them as an "in-document" backup.

Another question, is this related to a more minor issue that I noticed since trying the uninstalled utilities, the "Pinned" document list still appears when I right-click the Word icon in Task Bar, but it has disappeared from the list of "Recent" when you open Word ?

Please accept my apologies for the long reply.

Your advice should be much appreciated for the future safe use of Word, for both myself and other users.

Answer 4

At File | Options | Advanced, make sure that "Show drawings and text boxes on screen" is selected. At File | Options | Display, make sure that "Print drawings created in Word" is selected.

Answer 5

I have been manually saving the document every time I worked on it.