Sir, I deleted the document!

This happened yesterday. I was supposed to deliver one important document at the end of the day yesterday and at the end of the day I was ready with the document. I saved the document on a shared network drive so that my manager can take a look at it and edit it if necessary. The manager reviewed the document and he, quite painstakingly, replaced many screenshots with the latest ones and saved the document in the same place in the network drive.

I further formatted and edited the document so that everything is perfect, and then I tried to replace the old copy which was lying on my desktop with the latest one in the shared drive, and then deleted the copy from the shared drive over the network.

I searched for the document on my desktop, but it wasn’t there! I hadn’t saved the document properly. Then I went to the recycle bin hoping to find the deleted document but found my recycle bin to be cleaner than ever – nothing but a plain white wall. Since the latest document (the deleted one) was in the network drive, when deleted it doesn’t come to the local recycle bin. The document was gone!!

I sent an SOS message to my manager. He came running. I told him about my brilliant plan to replace the old document with the latest one without even saving it and how I ended up losing it. We called the network admin guys to check the recycle bin of the shared drive. But they told since it was deleted over the network, the file cannot be retrieved. The document was really gone!!

My manger is a positive man. He said, “Don’t worry, man, we can retrieve it”. In the next half an hour we frantically searched for a solution on the internet. “Eureka Forbes!” my manager shouted, there was a solution after all. That was to go to the folder in the network drive, right-click > properties > previous version. To our surprise, there it was…one of the previous versions! The document wasn’t gone!!

We quickly retrieved the document and saved it. Since it was the latest, I went back to my older version on my desktop and replaced it with the latest one successfully. Then I opened the document and as I went on to scroll down the document, my heart began to sink. The document was not the latest; in fact, it was much older than the one I had on my desktop. I had not only deleted the latest but also replaced the previous version with a very old version. Three days of hard work down the drain. The document was gone for good!!

I was facing the prospect of doing re-work of almost the entire document and also sending an apology mail to my boss in the US who was expecting the document to be delivered at the end of the day. But, again, my manager is a positive man. He said, “Joshi, don’t worry, we will re-do the document. I will send an email to the US people”. It was late in the evening and I was running out of time. I had to pick up my wife from her office. “I cannot re-do the document now. It will take time” I told my manager. “Don’t worry, you carry on, I will manage”, he said reassuringly.

Today morning, first thing at work, I opened the network drive and in my anger and frustration, I deleted the old copy which I retrieved in the place of the latest. My manager was not in the office, and I was in no mood to re-do the document. At 10:30 am my manager came. He was in a buoyant mood. He came to my desk and told, “You know what, I sat all night and finished the document. Today you can deliver it”. I was like, “Wow, cool”. Then I asked him where he saved the document, and he replied, “Same place, man, in the network drive”!! I slumped back into my chair. I didn’t know what to tell him. I had just deleted the document again!!

I didn’t have the courage to tell him I deleted it again. Instead, I told him, “Oh, nice, I will mail it to the US people”. As you read this, I’m working on the document.