Any way to save a document before force-quitting?

From what you’ve mentioned above, it seems it’s not responding.
If you can do with multiple documents, make a few more documents rather than a large one document.
You can email all documents then one by one, or compress all docs into one using Win Zip, WinRAR for Windows, and email them.

Well, I gave up and force-quit, hoping I had saved fairly recently—when I restarted it was back even farther than I imagined, surely before my last save… I have yet to see abut the other documents I had open at the time. I checked the trash for recovered files and looked through Pages Help and online forums, and only found that this is a common disappointment.

It’s so frustrating to loose work, especially when it’s hard to tell what’s been lost (various small but crucial things here and there, not just one piece at the end).

For future reference though, does emailing an unsaved doc actually send the current version, versus the saved version?

If you’re using Windows and Microsoft Office 2007, then there’s an option of “Autorecovery”. Turn it on if it’s not already.
By default, it saves files to following location, e.g. for MS Word:

C:\Documents and Settings\(User name)\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\

However, it will save tha data every 10 minutes by default.

Did you see in this location?

I’ve asked some friends over here, they say: for Microsoft Outlook, the file when you say email whether saved/unsaved, whatever changes have been made till that point, will be sent.

Well, if it’s not about large images you inserted, but one page full of text you just created there’s the option to create a screen shot. You can create a full screen image by using the related key on your keyboard. After restarting your program you would still have to retype the text, unless you got some OCR software.

Wow, that is a good idea mattbrowne, I will keep that in mind for future reference. Since Zina mentioned pages I assume she is using a mac, command shift 4 will give you a cursor so you can copy a piece of a page or command shift 3 copies the entire desktop. Sounds like it is too late for that though, but good idea if it happens again.

after you take a screenshot, you could then use Evernote to transcribe it back to a word document so you won’t even have to type it! Don’t you just LOVE computers?

@rooeytoo – Glad to be of service ;-)

I know it is nervy of me to step in here, but I use a bundled automatic back-up on Mac called TimeMachine. Then I have an external back-up to back up my back-up called Superduper. The whole shebang runs automatically after initial scheduling. It even purrs to let me know it’s running.