How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows • Hacker News Board

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#31

Post by avg_dev » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:02 PM UTC

jeroenhd wrote: post #21

It should be noted that files can often be recovered if you notice soon after accidentally deleting them. You need a file recovery tool that understands your file format (Recuva is a pretty good free tool) but you can save yourself hours of work if you act quickly. These tools rely on the fact that Windows (and most other operating systems) don't zero out the filesystem when deleting files. This means that the file c…

I upvoted this response. It is very thorough and clear. (I can't attest to the veracity of the content but it seems quite logical.) I just wanted to say thanks for writing this. Clearly, these approaches, as you say, are not exactly beginner friendly, but it is great to know that they exist.

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#32

Post by hilbert42 » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:02 PM UTC

You'd think that with Windows having an install size of some 7GB that Microsoft would still have room for a tiny amount of code that would prevent this stupid behavior from happening.

For decades, there have been other stupid annoyances with Windows Explorer such not providing options in 'Copy' to allow the automatic renaming of files in cases where the destination contains files of the same name. It stands to reason that there'll be occasions when one doesn't want to overwrite destination files.

For years, I often wondered about how Microsoft employees actually use the stuff they create—or if they use it at all.

How can they continue to use a 'nobbled' Windows when they have the power to actually fix these annoyances? It sort of defies all logic and reason.

Does anyone know the reason?

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#33

Post by theknocker » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:03 PM UTC

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Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#34

Post by masfuerte » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:03 PM UTC

AraceliHarker wrote: post #26

cka wrote: post #7

A similar annoyance is the fact that excel's undo applies to all open excel files. Make a change in a.xls, make a change in b.xls. if you ctrl-z twice with b.xls focused, it'll undo both of the above changes! This has bitten me more than once. Does anyone actually want this behavior?

Since Windows 11 includes extensive telemetry, it is possible that Microsoft intentionally designed it this way for user productivity.

Excel has several UI quirks that date back decades. It's never been consistent with the rest of Office even. If Microsoft changed it the accountants would revolt.

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#35

Post by theknocker » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:04 PM UTC

hilbert42 wrote: post #32

You'd think that with Windows having an install size of some 7GB that Microsoft would still have room for a tiny amount of code that would prevent this stupid behavior from happening. For decades, there have been other stupid annoyances with Windows Explorer such not providing options in 'Copy' to allow the automatic renaming of files in cases where the destination contains files of the same name. It stands to reason…

[dead]

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#36

Post by taneq » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:05 PM UTC

You know what's even more awesome? Select the desktop and press Ctrl+Z. The last thing you did in Explorer gets undone. Even if it was copying a 100GB file from a network share drive onto your local hard drive. Even if that was weeks ago. It's fantastic.

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#37

Post by taneq » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:06 PM UTC

cka wrote: post #7

A similar annoyance is the fact that excel's undo applies to all open excel files. Make a change in a.xls, make a change in b.xls. if you ctrl-z twice with b.xls focused, it'll undo both of the above changes! This has bitten me more than once. Does anyone actually want this behavior?

I'm continually bewildered by some of Excel's design choices. You can't have two files with the same filename open at the same time even if the files are in different directories. And you can't, for some reason, save to a path with square brackets in it. (You can save it with round brackets, rename the file, and then load the file perfectly fine, though.)

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#38

Post by jraph » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:08 PM UTC

a2128 wrote: post #25

I tested to see what some popular Linux file managers do in this scenario, GNOME Files and KDE Dolphin. Neither of them have undo in the right-click menu. Pressing ctrl+Z pops up the standard "Do you want to permanently delete this file?" confirmation dialog. Dolphin goes one step further, if you say yes to the confirmation dialog, it shows an additional one: "The file (copy) was copied from (original), but since the…

The KDE project does not produce perfect software, but they have attention to details. They are also eager to receive user feedback and to reverse decision after complains. They listen.

The last post of Adventures in Linux and KDE is a good example of this: https://pointieststick.com/2023/05/11/plasma-6-better-defaul...

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#39

Post by hnlmorg » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

deepersprout wrote: post #4

The folder you copy your file (any file that has some importance to you) to should be a onedrive synced folder. Word/Excel/Powerpoint/... files you edit in a synced folder save automatically without the need for you to ctrl+s. If you undo copy that file you will find it in your onedrive history.

The solution to the “undo copy” == “permanent delete” isn’t cloud storage. The solution is simply not to enable that option if the file has been modified. Or at least hide the option behind very explicit warnings.

I’m not saying cloud storage isn’t a good idea as well. But it solves a slightly different problem while creating new ones (needing a Microsoft account, needing an internet connection, files being suitable for cloud storage, etc).

Re: How to lose your work using Undo Copy in Windows

#40

Post by bartvk » Sat, May 13, 2023, 1:11 PM UTC

I get that this is a bug in Windows Explorer, I really do. But the discussion is now focusing on all sorts of workarounds like undeleting files, looking up scratch/swap files, etc. When in my opinion, the correct solution is hourly backups. On average, only half an hour of work would've been lost.