My post "The many forms of Sauron" in Reading Room is completely empty

[DeadRabbits]

I wrote a rather extensive text in Word, copied it into the the advanced editor using Firefox, previewed the message and posted it - only to discover that it contains no text at all. Could an admin please remove it so that I can post it again?

Also, does anyone have any clue to what might have happened and if there are any precautions I must take to make sure that I don't repeat the same mistake again?

 

[Eledhwen]

I don't know why the text vanished - a couple of times I've gone to edit one of my own posts and can't see the text in advanced editor, but then it's there in basic.

 

[Altaira]

You had a copy saved, just in case, and you previewed the post to make sure it looked okay. A couple possibilities:

1) not sure how long you took to copy, preview, etc., but it might have timed out on you.

2) if you formatted your post in Word, it won't necessarily translate to the forums well, particularly if you used a font the forums don't support. Don't waste your time making it look pretty in Word. In fact, even if it looks bog-standard plain in Word, Word has hidden formatting that often doesn't translate well. If I compose something in Word, I often cut and paste it into Notepad which removes all of the formatting. From Notepad, cut and paste it into the forum, then use Advanced Editor to do the formatting within the forum software.

Another recommendation - once you get your post written and formatted in the forum software, copy it before you preview, tweak it if necessary, then copy it again before you preview.