Hello all. I have been working extensively on a science paper(around 24 hours of work), and I finished it today. I have the rough draft version saved on the computer, then I worked on that to make my final draft. I printed it, then I thought I saved it, but I cannot find my final draft on the computer I used.
Fortunately it is printed out, or I would have to spend hours on revising it again; I spent five hours revising it today. Is there any way I can scan the paper on the computer and make it work on word processor because I need to fix about two mistakes on it still? Or do I have to retype it all again?
First, I’d use whatever search utilities you have to really scan your drives, especially where you think it was or might be. If you can, try searching for known text inside the document in whatever WP format you’re using. I’ve misplaced documents by saving to the wrong folder, or mistyping the save-as name, or just overlooking them right in front of my nose.
Otherwise, sure … You can scan and OCR your printout if you have a scanner and OCR. You’ll have to check and edit the OCR results, but that’s faster than retyping it. And you might have to re-do any graphics or special layouts. If you don’t have a scanner, you might try your local FedEx/Kinkos. They offer scanning and OCR on-site.
We’ve all been there, done that. Sympathies, and good luck!
If that doesn’t work, you can try running an advanced search of your entire hard drive, and tell your computer to show you every single file you’ve modified since yesterday. If your paper still exists, it should show up there.
Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, the work was saved on a school computer in the library. I know that complicates things. We log in with our own accounts, and our personals are saved there. I will try what you guys said and try to find it. Wish me luck!
It’s after the fact, so not great help, but memory sticks are the thing to use, if they’re allowed. I don’t know what the school regime is in the U.S. - I’m extrapolating from my own business experience. I tend to have to email myself my documents from my corporate account to my hotmail account. I could put them on a memory stick - my two laptops are side-by-side here - but it’s quicker to email it. Mostly that is because my memory stick has an encryption option for the business computer, and while I don’t wish to use it, the popup takes time. You could argue that emailing yourself documents is cloud computing. Sorta.
The school must have some method of getting our documents to the outside world.
Thanks for the replies all. I had one of the school technicians help me, and he could not find the documents either, and he used some of the advice from here. There is some sort of weird thing that if someone opens a link from an email and tries to save it to the school computer, then it will not save unless you save it in a complicated way. I didn’t really understand what the tech guy was saying. It took about two hours, but I finally just bit the bullet and used the hard-copy I printed as a guide to revise my paper. Thanks for the advice, though!
From elementary school through grad school, I typed all my papers on the same 1952-vintage Smith-Corona “Silent” manual portable typewriter, which I still have in good working order. And despite the wonders of Wite-Out and erasable paper, the final step was usually to take the well-scribbled final draft and manually retype the whole thing.
I always used to type a draft, edit with a pencil, throw out the draft and type a new one from scratch. I found that my first draft was always very disorganized, but helped me figure out what I was going to say.
Anyway, as to the current problem, which seems resolved, one in a similar situation could use one’s camera phone to photograph the printed document, upload it to google drive, and use their free OCR app.
Sympathies, and good luck!