First of all I want to give thanks to Dropbox.

I work out of my dropbox folder these days and thank goodness I do. At the end of my last round of edits I decided to read through the completed file on my tablet, which in its infinite Androidy wisdom (NOT) decided it should strip out every quotation mark, apostrophe, dash and ellipsis from the entire file.

I’ll just give that a moment to sink in…

Every. Single. One.

I discovered it on Sunday morning. The edits were due on Monday.

Yes. There was screaming. There was crying. There was a bit of throwing myself about on the stairs and on the sofa. My children frantically made tea and brought me crisps and hot wings sauce to dip them in. The dog hid. I suspect my husband my have contemplated just staying upstairs and locking some doors. He didn’t. He’s good that way.

No, he was the one who kept the level head and pointed out that you can get the previous versions of files on the Dropbox website. Which I did. And all was good. All I lost were a couple of bookmarks I’d made on the errant tablet version of the document. It took about an hour to fix it. Once I’d calmed down.

So great was the relief, and what did we learn?

Always always always keep multiple backups, preferably with iterations of files. Whether you use something like Dropbox or not. Do not save anything on my tablet. Ever. (Yours might be perfectly well behaved). Keep a level head and remember what safeguards you have put in place. Dropbox.

And when I freak out bring me tea and crisps and hide. Blue cheese is also good.

Phew. It was a nightmare. But the edits went in on time. It’s only taken me about three weeks to recover and write this down. The next round are due next week.

Backups, kids. We love them!

I learned something else today. I say learned but I already knew it. It is this: I am not be trusted in the library with my library card and research books. Exhibit A

But um… yes… one of these things is not like the others…