I just came so very close to losing my afternoon’s work. I started a new Google Document at around 1500, and it’s been open ever since. I noticed at around 1800 that the ’saving’ message was there continually, but I couldn’t say when it had appeared. I left it for an hour, came back and there was no change. ‘Save and Close’ didn’t work, so I closed the tab. I refreshed Google Docs to be informed the document hadn’t changed since 1507. I opened the document and saw a blank screen. Oh, crap.

Thankfully, a little stab of paranoia had saved the day. When I originally went to close the tab the ‘you have unsaved changes’ message popped up. It always does, but for once I paid attention. I select-all/copied the entire document as a last ditch backup, and thankfully this was still in the clipboard a few moments later¹. I lost the page breaks, but that’s no big deal.

That’s the first time I can recall Google completely killing a document. That would have been bad. So, if in doubt, reload Google Docs in another tab and check the modified time.

1. actually I had another backup layer, as I run the security-nightmare but oh-so-very-useful Ditto [↩]