I trusted someone to be a beta reader and editor for my manuscript,and I just found out yesterday that she deleted all traces of it back in October. She said it was derivative trash and a waste of my time. I can't retrieve the file because it's been more than 30 days. I'm lost. Totally gutted. I don't know what to do.
@eileenwanita Where was the manuscript stored when you were working on it? If it's some cloud-hosted software system . . . well, I wouldn't know what to do either. If it was on a device that you loaned to the no-longer-trusted-someone . . . again, not highly promising. Otherwise, check "recycle bins", temp folders, look for any "*.bak" files (or the like), etc. If you're lucky you might be able to recover some of your work. If you're *really* lucky, you might be able to recover most of it.
@Marc_T_Benedict it was on Google docs and they're telling me they can't retrieve it since it's been over 30 days since she deleted it.
@Marc_T_Benedict I was really careful about saving my work and emailing it to friends so they would have copies too, but I saved it all to Google docs and she deleted all of it.
@eileenwanita Damn. I guess the closest I've ever experienced to that was losing a notes application I'd written for company use to a ransomware attack, seven years ago. I actually have the code, but its database (with all the relevant metadata) was lost to impenetrable file encryption. Several months worth of work, at least. I still haven't summoned the nerve to try to recreate it.🙄
@Marc_T_Benedict And none of my friends saved the manuscript onto their drives because they all assumed I had it saved somewhere other than Google docs. My one friend had it saved on a computer she lost in a move, and she's so sorry, but I really can't blame her. It's my own fault for trusting this person and not trusting any of my friends enough to email them copies to read.
@Marc_T_Benedict I was worried about bugging people, so I just shared it on a shared Google doc with whoever wanted to read it and the only hard copies were mine and this other person's. Mine is lost on a computer that died, and hers is deleted. Or my friend TJ thinks she might be planning to steal it and get it published herself. I guess we'll see.
@eileenwanita A computer that died? Hmm . . . I guess it depends on the *kind* of death, but if the hard drive in question on the "dead" machine wasn't damaged, someone might be able to hook the disk up with a working machine and recover contents from it fairly easily.😗
@eileenwanita I remember losing credentials to a Microsoft account on a Windows 10 machine a couple of years back. And (as you might expect) Microsoft was about as useful as the Abuse bureaucrat at the Argument Clinic (actually even less helpful for that matter). I managed to get something working again in about a day, but the old profile folder and registry keys were at least available. But if you weren't able to save a copy of your work to a local device . . . . 😬