®
WARNING!

We recently had the misfortune of destroying our entire MAIN Web Search database
which is used in our online search directory.
This had nothing to do with the Web Search software but was related to how we were
building our database using Excel. No, it had nothing to do with Excel either. Just 
a stupid mistake on our part which others might benefit from hearing about.

We were using the same type of spreadsheet format that many of you are using.
Because we maintain several databases, we thought it would be easy to simply
copy and paste information from one spreadsheet into another and back again depending
on the need. This turned out to be a HUGE mistake.

The spreadsheet we were copying and pasting into was NOT exactly the same format as
the one we have online. So when we copied rows back from this "new" spreadsheet we
brought the bad format back with us. We uploaded the original spreadsheet back to
the server and all appeared well.

It wasn't. The next time we opened Excel, the entire spreadsheet had become one, long
list of links, urls, and keywords in a format that was impossible to restore to it's
original and correct format.

The result was we had to spend 2 full days completely rebuilding the spreadsheet to
it's correct format. This didn't have to happen and we could have easily protected
ourselves, but we didn't.

With the above in mind, here are some tips to make sure you don't run into the
same problem we did. Yes, some of this is common sense and NO it doesn't help to
know that!

• Steps to protect your data.
  • Always keep a copy of your spreadsheet on a floppy or on a different directory.
  • When adding new data, always try and add to the bottom of the spreadsheet.
    This way, if you should have to restore from the original you'll have some kind of an idea where to look on the corrupted file for the new data you just added and is now lost.
  • NEVER save any new work to this floppy until after you've closed out your updated spreadsheet and reopened it to see if it's ok. If it's not, you'll know. Trust me.
  • If you need to work on some new ideas with your spreadsheet, do it in a new directory. This way if it becomes corrupted, you can always reload the original version.
  • NEVER copy and paste from one spreadsheet to another. Especially don't copy it back to the original.
  • Don't try to retrieve a good copy from your host server. If you must, download the server copy to a temp directory until you have a chance to check it out.
  If any of you have run into a similar situation and found a cure to restore the original text tab-delimited format, please let us know so we can share the information with others.

  Thanks