I'm writing this article for fun, it may seem pretty obvious what I’m going to say. I mean I’m sure that I’m telling you something that you may already know. But I made this mistake myself a few hours ago and it made me feel so bad that I wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t suffer the same fate. It is very frustrating when you lose your work forever. I’m going to share some tips to avoid losing your documents and assignments.

My Personal Nightmare

I decided that I wanted to type my article directly into Street Articles. I clicked on Publish Article and then began to type my text directly into the Article Body. Now this is not my normal way of working. I have a habit of always writing my articles in word and then copying and pasting the content. However today I was working on my friends Mac as my Pc has some malware and I thought I didn’t want to bother with working out any technical differences using word on a mac. I now know that there are no major noticeable differences with word on mac, and I’ve used it with ease.

So I got to the end of the article, it was quite a pleasure to write in fact. I wasn’t focusing on keywords or content specifically, I was just writing about an experience.

Then just as I clicked publish it disappeared!

Fortunately for me in this instance I was able to remember most of what I wrote, but prevention truly is better than cure. So it got me thinking….

What can you do to prevent and recover lost documents?

Firstly

• Always work directly in word - This is much safer than typing directly in the article body!

• Set your pc to automatically save every few minutes. This minimizes the risk if some work is lost. You’ll feel assured that you will never lose the entire document.

• Send yourself a copy of your work via email once you update it. Having virtual backup of your work is essential. Computers can malfunction and are prone to virus, external drives can get lost, but email is always accessible.

• Save a few versions of your work. One on to an external hard drive and on to the hard drive.

I hope you found these simple writing tips helpful. Sometimes it is the most obvious things that we forget! As a writer, what are some of the preventive measures you use to protect your work? Have I missed anything out?