After considerable time and effort composing topic re problems with tower drives/CD-RW, new disk formatting and retention of all spreadsheet formulas at Save As, made a stupid mistake.

At Preview screen, unthinklingly clicked to correct a typo. Entire message entirely disappeared in a flash.

All I have is a blank New Topic screen and extensive search unsuccessful.
Am I the only idiot hereon?

Where did it go, or much more importantly, how can it be restored?

Please advise before funeral preparations necessary.

PS: Be assured this problem will NEVER recur.

Hi roduke41, welcome to SAF

Sounds like you hit the "Go Back" button on your browser. This may have returned you to the posting page as it originally was (blank). Unfortunately, there is no solution for this, sorry.

On long posts, before doing anything, I use to Ctrl C the whole text.

Chris

Hi roduke41 Welcome to SAF

Don't be too hard on yourself, I've been there and done that so many times...

What I do now is, I open Notepad, and after I type a few sentences, I'll highlight them , than I'll click on Notepad, and save it in there, make sure you click on save to name the file...(I named mine...extra). Also make sure you click on save everytime you add something.

Or you could type everything in Notepad, Wordpad, or even Word, then highlight it and copy it back to your post. I've done it different ways, but like the first option better.

Lorraine

Obliged for the work-arounds , Lorraine. I realize they are alternatives, but for those of limited experience
"the cure is worse than the bite"! Who wants to go through all that simply as a safeguard?
Easier alternative is to ignore the typos.

Conclude not possible to retrieve from Preview and wonder just why that is, and/or why no bright red warning of consequences if any change whatever is attempted thereon.

Where do the contents go, why do they go, and why are they irretrievably lost, are all deserving of attention in my opinion.

Again thanks, Cordially, RO

Data typed into a window on a web page is buffered in memory on the users computer until you 'submit' it, just like typing in a wordpad, or notepad window, it isn't saved until you actually 'Save' it to a file. Although, I'm not really sure about the info in a Preview page..... ??

Hi RO,

Just a thought, are you talking about a program like Word, where you get a full Preview screen, or are you talking about here, where you can click on Preview post???


If it is a program like Word, you could click on save as you go...

If you did it here on the board, the solution is not to click back. When you "preview post" it gives you little space at the top with your post and plenty of room below to edit it. There is no reason to click "back" on the browser. And on top of that, if you still aren't sure it's right they give you another "preview post" button. So the solution is simple.

Or as others have suggested you can copy it to the clipboard until you're sure it posted.

That said, from your original post you don't indicate that you did click any "back" or any other button. Are you saying that you simply clicked on a section you wanted to fix and it all just disappeared into a cloud of smoke? That's a neat trick, and I'm not sure where to begin.