PAGES ATE MY BABY, I mean, paper.

April 26, 2007 6:13 PM

My mac ate my paper via Pages. now it is gone. help.

I was using Pages to write a paper, and I went to print it, and it "unexpectedly quit," but I don't know how to recover the paper. Does anybody know how to get it back? It was really good. Real nice paper. Don't want to do it again. HELP. Why doesn't Pages automatically save while you write? I hate Pages now.

posted by bash to computers & internet (15 comments total)

It's probably gone if it was never saved.

You might might might find something in /tmp

In the Finder choose

Go>Go to folder...

and type /tmp

this is where applications store crap that will be cleaned up the next time you restart.

But I'm guessing it's gone.




motto: save early, save often
posted by unSane at 6:42 PM on April 26, 2007

If you did not save it before you tried to print it, I'm afraid it's gone.
posted by pmbuko at 6:45 PM on April 26, 2007

I know; I know better. But I'm so used to writing in googledocs, which saves every five seconds, and I just assumed it would save it for me. Which reminds me of that old saying,"when you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME." Sigh. Thanks. I'll give it a run.
posted by bash at 6:45 PM on April 26, 2007

Pages doesn't auto-save, you have to cmd-S now and then.

I am pretty sure you are screwed :-(
posted by Tacos Are Pretty Great at 6:47 PM on April 26, 2007

I would try going to Terminal and typing

grep -r -i 'a phrase from your document' *

before giving up entirely.
posted by Tacos Are Pretty Great at 6:48 PM on April 26, 2007

I'm really having trouble not saying something obnoxious related to the "switch" or "two annoying guys in front of a whitescreen" ads.

TAPG's grep suggestion is the best thing I can think of. Good luck. Make sure you exhaust all possible temp directories before giving up.

Seriously, hasn't autosave been a basic word processing function since the 1980s? Even if Pages never crashes, did nobody consider the possibility of a power failure?
posted by mrbugsentry at 7:03 PM on April 26, 2007

From this discussion, it looks like for now you're screwed, but that this AppleScript might help provide you with autosave functionality in the future.
posted by WCityMike at 7:22 PM on April 26, 2007

I don't know what temprary files Pages created, but I do know how to search for files modified with a certin time frame.

So, if you haven't rebooted, try this command from Terminal:

sudo find / -mmin -30

You'll have to enter your password (assuming you are an admnistrator.)

There may be many files that meet this criteria - pay attention to things in /Library or /User, and you can probably not worry about stuff in /private

For example, /Users/bash/Library/Caches/Pages

You may or may not discover a .file or cache from Pages.

And don't forget to check the Trash can.
posted by four panels at 7:29 PM on April 26, 2007

note: change your -mmin time to however many minutes ago Pages crashed
posted by four panels at 7:30 PM on April 26, 2007

I'd check the crash log as well...if it uses some kind of temp file it might list it there.
posted by frieze at 7:58 PM on April 26, 2007

when you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME

See, I never understood that. What did I do wrong? If you want to make an ass of yourself, fine, but don't drag me into it. :)

Anyway. Pages, as far as I know, doesn't autosave. A dude in this Macworld forum thread doesn't think so either, and Wikipedia lists it as a feature that Word has and Pages doesn't. Sorry...
posted by danb at 8:03 PM on April 26, 2007

Autosave is an odd feature. Photoshop doesn't and has never had it, partly I think because the file sizes can be so large that autosave is a serious interruption (I work with >1Gb files in PS all the time).

Pages is nominally a word processor but it is oriented around graphics-heavy presentations, so that maybe part of the explanation (although I doubt it).

The Mac Way is actually increasingly for you not to have to think about saving (eg iTunes). You do it and it's already saved. You unsave by undoing. I'd like to see this in Pages.
posted by unSane at 8:21 PM on April 26, 2007

unSane: Yeah, the concept of 'saving' is something that seems to be on the way out. I think Time Machine is going to act as a stepping-stone to that world - it'll get people used to the idea of thinking of files as things that exist over a time dimension. Then, at some point in the future, the 'save' option will just vanish completely.
posted by dmd at 8:40 PM on April 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

My file is totally gone, for those who are wondering; I found the file that represented the place where my file would be (it had the correct time and print job # but was blank). I HATE Pages. I wouldn't use Pages to clean my toilet. Pages is lame, and see, what DMD said there? I'm livin' in the future and the 'save' option has already vanished from my forward-thinking mind. I'm just sittin' here waiting for the future to get here so I won't have to deal with this kind of crap ever again.

Thanks for all the help though. I imagine all this advice will be useful later.
posted by bash at 8:49 PM on April 26, 2007

I was really hoping my other post would be the best answer.

Sorry to hear it, and as for Pages, I'm also unimpressed. I use Word 2003 on Parallels instead. Maybe version 3 or 4 will have it all figured out.
posted by Tacos Are Pretty Great at 6:09 AM on April 27, 2007