What a Happy Day!


Anyone who knows me knows I love movies. That line, said by Eddie Murphy in Trading Places, is one of my favorites. I was mixing up a new batch of homemade laundry detergent when I realized I was 1/2 cup short of washing soda. I thought I'd moved an extra box from my car trunk into the garage by the door. I didn't find the washing soda, but I found something I'd been looking for for quite some time...a case of old 3.5 computer disks that contained my original manuscripts for my older, pre-laptop titles. I immediately pulled out my old 3.5 external USB drive, hooked it to my computer, and tried to open the file. I got an error message that said, essentially, that files in this older version of Word are blocked by my registry policy settings. It sounded like something terribly complicated, but I nevertheless clicked on the provided link for more information. There I discovered that the files weren't so old that they couldn't be opened; I just had to set up a Trusted Location on my computer. Following the steps provided, I did just that, moved one file to the new location, and just like that it opened in Word 2007!

I've had the rights for my first two books for about two years, and I've planned on re-publishing them as eBooks since I started Bunderful Books at around the same time. The delay came in locating the disks, which had been in storage in Florida for two years before we bought our home up here and were somewhere in the garage. Then there was the worry that once I found them I might not be able to open them, even with an external drive that reads the now-outmoded 3.5 disks. I decided to leave it to Fate...if it was meant to be, it would be.

I love happy endings, don't you?

Now it's off to the store to get that washing soda.

Have you ever come across something important while searching for something else?

1 comments:

PatriciaW said...

That's good info because I assumed all versions of Word accepted older files.

Saw Trading Places on Saturday. Love that movie!