Can you explain this?

[SquirrelsAreStinky]

Hi,

I’m posting here in desperation to see if anyone can explain this.

There’s a Google document that was shared with me as read-only. It contained a certain phrase - let’s say it said “all squirrels have bushy tails”. I messaged “Janet” at the time and said “do you know this document says “all squirrels have bushy tails” It’s a pain and really hard to find information about this.” I quoted the document word-for-word to her.

Fast-forward one week.

The document now says “check to see what tails are available for squirrels”.

There is also a blank line at the top of the text box which is about “squirrel tails”. In every other box the text starts at the top with no blank lines inserted. It’s odd that there’s a blank line first. I can’t swear that the blank line wasn’t there before but I’ve noticed it now. And I noticed it straight away which suggests I would have noticed it at the time. It looks like something has been altered.

Janet is the document owner. Apparently no one else had edit access.

Janet has given me edit access because I asked her to so I could see the history. There are no other versions showing on the history of the document.

Janet says the document wasn’t changed by her and no one else could have changed it. But not only is my recollection that the document said something different, I wrote to her literally at the time quoting the document - and that’s not what it says now. I haven’t got my documents mixed up as I haven’t seen any others about squirrel tails.

And there’s the odd blank line which suggests something has been deleted.

It definitely, definitely said something different last week. But how can this be?! Janet isn’t the most honest person in the world but there’s no reason for her to change it that I can think of. And it would show on version history, wouldn’t it?

I’m so confused.

I know this is the world’s most boring mystery to everyone else but it’s driving me mental! Can anyone help?

AIBU to still think the document has definitely been changed because I bloody quoted it at the time? I also had to go back and change a load of the things I’d written on a separate document because of what this said hence why I remember it so well.

If Janet is the only person with edit access, then Janet changed it.

Does it even matter?

Go to File > version history

Click on the version and you should see a bit that tells you how many edits were made, then you can click through each edit and it shows what was changed and who by

Janet has discovered that some squirrels don't have bushy tails, but rather than admit that she might have jumped the gun assuming all of them do, she's amended the document to show this still needs to be checked.

She's copied it into a brand new document. She has deleted the old document completely and substituted the new document. As it is the same name it doesn't show an amendment.

Have you tried highlighting the blank line? It may have been done in white font to not show up the content.

Yes I'd probably 'select all' and paste it into a new document and make all the text black to see if something has been changed to white font for some reason.

You said there is no other version is the doc history, but when was the doc uploaded or created? If she has created a new file, or deleted the old one and reuploaded as a new file, then no other version would show in the file history.

Well, this was the conclusion I had drawn but I'm wondering how on earth she changed the document with nothing showing in the version history.

As you can probably imagine, I didn't give the full picture in my OP. I'm freelance, Janet is a regular client, but she's sort of an agency, not the end client. The document contains the instructions from the end client so they're the ones that would have written "make sure you mention all squirrels have bushy tails".

The background is that this was an absolute pig of a piece of work which I am going to be drastically, drastically underpaid for already because it wasn't as described - and I suspect they're now going to try and get me to change parts of it for free by pretending the different instructions were there all along - which I know they bloody weren't because I copied them into a message.....! They're already using it to delay payment while they "query" it.

I don't mind making amendments to my work if needed. I do mind being given shitty instructions and not being paid properly for the task in the first place. And I particularly mind someone trying to get me to make amendments on the sneak because they fucked up the instructions in the first place.......

I should have downloaded a copy of the document rather than worked online. Ridiculous really though! If I did this for every brief, I'd have thousands of the bloody things!

The document currently showing on there has a creation date of before the work was done - let's say the 7th December. So unless she had a blank document that she created back then that hadn't been used, I don't think this would have been possible.

Unless she randomly kept a copy of the file that was only private to her and then swapped the link over?

I've tried highlighting, I've tried pasting....nothing.

Honestly, if this was just my memory, I'd be forced to accept that I had completely imagined what I believe I read. However, the fact that I copied a big chunk of text into a message proves that it must have been there - it's not the kind of thing that I could just dream up, if that makes sense?!

I really appreciate everyone trying to come up with possibilities. It's utterly maddening knowing that it was clearly there - I just don't know how it's been hidden. The blank line is a bit of a giveaway too - doesn't match the formatting on the rest of the document. The end client did the rest of the document but I suspect Janet made the change so probably didn't realise/notice their usual layout....

Aaah fuck it. I don't know. It was there and now it's not, and the only plausible explanation I have right now is Christmas magic 🤷‍♀️😅

She probably created the original document on her computer, uploaded it to teams or wherever, and when you sent that, deleted the shared document and amended the one she had stored and reuploaded it.