To ask you to HELP me not to fail uni urgently

[fuckingwankingshittycomputer]

My computer is old I hate it

It's a mac

I need to submit as .doc

Weeks of work has now changed to bloody symbols that are unreadable

Last time it worked simply by saving as .doc

I am panicking please tell me this is easily fixed

I do have an old draft version worst case scenario but I've just lost a few days worth of formatting, spell checking and making sure I haven't accidentally plagiarised anything

I'm happy for you to forward to me to put into .docx format which is readable by most (all?) word processors.

I'd check the font hasn't changed to something stupid like Webdings or whatever.

Can you email it to someone to check if they get nonsense?

Is there an Export option?

Yeah webdings is what it looks like

Bastard computer

Right I'm going to breathe and try saving it as docx

It can't get any worse

"If you go to Word>Preferences>Save and find that "Always create backup" is on, then the previous version of the document is in the same folder, labelled "Backup of...". If it wasn't turned on, turn it on now, to save you in the future."

From a Microsoft forum.

Did you happen to have it on? Would be lucky!

Upload to google docs and you can download in any file type you need, plus have the original stored on google drive as a backup.

Nope docx hasn't changed anything

Thank you for the offer to send but there's something in the rules about not sharing work (admittedly it's beyond unlikely your on the same course and module as me but to be safe I'm going to ring a relatives phone off the hook till they pick up if I don't figure it out for them to do that)

Relative I'm going to annoy - already tried the google doc thing and I couldn't open it

Nope! 😭😭😭 but relative has been woken and is giving it a go I've emailed them

When did you last save it?

Have you tried copying & pasting the whole thing into a new doc and changing the font?

No... I had several fonts as part of the formatting

I'm kicking myself for not saving and emailing myself like I should have before trying to convert it!

Last saved several mins ago when I tried the docx thing

It's worse than pages I think - it's old enough computer that it's text edit

I wish I had the faintest idea what you are all saying.

I'll get my coat.

If it were me I'd save a duplicate so if I made it worse it'd be ok, then save the duplicate again as .rtf (rich text format) or if that doesn't work as a plain text file (.txt) then go from there if either one worked.

There's also a "revert to" function in the File menu if you have Time Machine set up but you'd have to try that on your original.

Try removing all of the formatting to see if that restores the original font?

most unis (all??) have IT support (ours was in Library) ring/visit & ask for help

Presumably you're not able to just keep hitting the 'undo' button until it reverts back?

next time save on stick as you go along as well