I just accidentally pasted over my final chapter in Scrivener and I can find an 'undo' button. For the love of God, someone tell me there is a way to reverse this mistake!
I think Ctrl-Z is undo, but please wait for someone else before trying it in case I'm wrong. I think @Iain Aschendale uses Scrivener? Maybe I saw that somewhere?
Yeah, Ctrl + Z is undo in pretty much every program, so it'd be weird for it to be different in Scrivener. I, however, do not use Scrivener so I could be wrong.
No, it's not working. If I just fucked myself, I am going to go postal on my computer. I spent a whole week on that chapter ><.
I don't use Scrivener, so I'm not sure how else you would undo something in that program. Did you save it or exit the program before you tried Ctrl + Z?
Okay... I think @EdFromNY , @minstrel and @Komposten use Scrivener (sorry for tagging you all, but desperate times and such - I haven't used Scriv in 2 years and don't remember)
Yeah, I exited without saving hoping it would undo it. I might have made a grave mistake on that approach. I am very afraid at the moment.
This may not help you out right now but I have done similar things to myself in the past NowI always keep an automatic backup of all files in a separate folder. I thought CTRL Z worked but maybe not.
I should have just printed the motherfucker >.< but I wanted to take a three week break away from the project. The only reason I was in the program was because I copy & paste it into an E-mail for an Alpha reader, and I hit Crtl + V instead of Crtl + C and the damage was done.
Off the top of my head, I don't know a way to undo this damage. There are ways of setting up automatic backup preferences, but if you didn't do that, you might be out of luck. If I were you, I'd go to the Scrivener forums on www.literatureandlatte.com. Ask there. They created the software, so they'll be the utimate master expert sensei guru people. They will be the Superheroes You Need. Good luck.
Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z on Mac) is undo, and should work if you replaced text (as long as you have the file/text in question open and it has focus). Exiting the program is a bad idea if you have auto-save on. My Scriv saves if I don't do anything for 2 seconds, so if I were to remove something and then exit the program it will already have saved the change. I would suggest automatic backups (you can set it to create a zipped backup every time you close/open/every X minutes) to avoid similar problems in the future.
Wish I could help, but I'm still in my 30 day trial after a year or so, so I've got no suggestions that aren't already upthread. Good luck.
Victory.... Sciv automatically backs up files, after 30 mins of searching I found the earlier draft and was able to restore it. - I am going to print a copy just so I have a hard copy on hand. Thanks for all the help, folks.
Congrats, @OJB! The gods smiled upon you this time... ...but don't petition them too often - they can be touchy! Sacrifice them a pig. (Keep the bacon, of course, because bacon.)
Sorry I didn't see this until now. But I wouldn't have been able to tell you anything the others haven't already told you. Glad it worked out.
There should be a backup folder somewhere. Scrivener should creat zips automatically every time you save. So you should be able to find the most recent zip before you pasted over. I rushed to share this, feeling your panic. Seems you found it. Great. I have Scrivener set to backup every time I close. I believe you can also find a way to back the backup folder to a cloud destination but I have not yet figured that one out.
I have a Mac and I use Control Z. It does work to undo your previous action ...at least most of the time. HOWEVER, it only works if its the FIRST thing you do after you realise a mistake. You press one other key or make one other click beforehand and you've had it. So the first thing to do if you realise you've done something in error is stop. Take a deep breath. Don't do anything at all until you've doused the panic. Then try Cntrl+Z. I'm delighted you were able to get your work back, @OJB. I don't use Time Machine or the equivalent any more because I've had it screw up on me twice. However, I do save all my daily work on flash drives as soon as it's done. Sometimes even more frequently. I also print stuff out before quitting. However, human error ...doing something you didn't mean to do ...is still likely, isn't it? I'm glad your problem sorted itself.
Yay! Now that all is well, check your backup settings—Scrivener defaults to a quite small number of backups and backs up every time you open/close, so if you’re not careful you can wipe out the last good backup while frantically debugging. I changed the settings to basically infinite backups. Also, yes, print. This reminds me that it’s time to do another backup-print. (7 point type, double sided, single spaced, almost zero margins. You can get a lot of writing-per-printed-page that way.)
With Ctrl-Z you mean the Undo function, right? Then it's on Command-Z on a Mac... Two keys over from Control, and much more comfortable as the default main function key than Ctrl, which is used on Windows. And don't diss Time Machine. When it works, it's very very helpful. Saved me countless of times. Yes, it may break from time to time, but that usually does not mean total loss of backups. Just that you have to reconfigure, and maybe start a new backup from scratch. I use it, but I don't rely on it alone. You shouldn't anyway. As the saying goes, two backups are one, and one is none. My second one is a (bootable) clone of my main boot and data drive (I use Carbon Copy Cloner to maintain it as incremental every week or so, depending on how much data the work produces, so I don't have to clone all the drive every time. The other standard software for doing that on the Mac is Super Duper. Both commercial, but cheap). It means that you need to have two external hard drives at least as large as the internal drive, but they're cheap nowadays. Don't need to be super fast, just reliable. Good old proven spinners.
