My brain was just functioning enough
God, I was so happy, that my brain was just functioning enough to use GOOGLE! Yeah, I know! Google, right? But let me assure you that it really saved me from a sleepless night, when I checked the Bro Newspaper from Saturday to Sunday night at a quarter to two in the morning) I wanted to double check it for any spelling mistakes. I made the file itself in hackmd, Oh, I love Hackmd, it really is ideal! Unless you want to quickly check a file in the middle of the night.
The story
For the second week in a row I had worked to put a fantastic Newspaper online, and I was happy with my file last Saturday. Already forwarded the link to 
But sometimes… sometimes those things work a little differently. Lana decided the moment I had the Hackmd file open WITH the cursor in the file to come and cuddle with me. And anyone who knows Lana knows that something she has in her head will happen!
This time it was cuddling with Lady-boss. My partner was asleep and Lana noticed I was awake and she wanted some attention. Nothing wrong with that, but she really likes to use her paws. So also this time. What she did, no one will ever know, I certainly don't…but I do know that I panicked when her paw touched my keyboard and I saw the entire Bro Newspaper “flop” disappear before my eyes.
Ow My GOD NOOOOO!
That was a week's work, and now that it had to be published the next morning/afternoon, now it was gone? I stared at my screen for several minutes in disbelief and defeat. After really having to accept that my screen was really blank, I tried different key combinations to see if I could undo an edit. I have tried everything to get my file back. While many things happened, none of them were what I hoped to see happen. It really looked like the Newspaper was gone.
Ray? Did you save the Bro Newspaper?
My last hope was Ray. I had already sent him the link of the Hackmd file earlier in the evening, and I sincerely hoped that he had already taken it over so that he could post it later. Unfortunately! At first, Ray believed it couldn't be gone, because it was stored on Discord. But that was just the link of the file, of course, and the file itself had changed ... into an empty file. SHIT!
So no rescue here either. It looked like I would have to rewrite in a few hours what I had worked on for a week before. And believe me, I seriously wanted to do everything I could to do that. Because no newspaper? That just wasn't an option!
The rescue!
In case this ever happened to you with Hackmd… or if it ever happens to you. Don't panic! Because even though I didn't know it, I still didn't give up and decided to throw a good google search at it. And my god, I was so happy ... when I came across a forum topic in where I found the answer I needed.
Hackmd saves your file after every change, or about every 10 minutes if you don't make any changes but have the file open. When I read that I knew...there MUST be a way to restore it to a previously saved copy. And there is that way!
When you open a Hackmd file then this kind of empty notes is what you will see. You'll see the editor, and you can start typing your blog right away.
I had been typing in my file all week. Each note carefully worked out. Searched my images, checked everything 40x ... and when everything was ready, the link was sent to Ray.
So far, so good. The file is ... and was neatly saved so Ray could post it when he was ready. My file looked like this...
So at that moment my dog hit the keyboard of my laptop, and...POOF...my text was gone!
But here is the trick!
- click on the 3 dots at the top of your screen!
- a menu now pops out and you choose the first option
- you will now see all previously stored versions of this document
- if you click on this you will see which version of the document it is, and here you can choose the version you want to restore
- when you have made your choice, which previous version of this document you want back, click on REVERT at the bottom of this screen
Et voila!
Your document has been miraculously restored, and your work has not been in vain!
Completely RELIEVED!
I seriously can't tell you how relieved I was to find this through GOOGLE. Because having to rewrite the entire Bro Newspaper in just a few hours, in the middle of the night? Wow, that really was NOT something I was looking forward to.
Sleep, that's what I wanted. But nevertheless, if I had to, I would have done it. Fortunately it was not necessary. But I did learn my lesson for the next Bro Newspaper, which I'm already working on, of course.
NO more wanting to check in the middle of the night! Good is good, and once the link forwarded to Ray, don't touch it again... You never know with those dogs these days. They sometimes want to help and I should have known that usually causes more misery than you'd like...