"Disappearing" docs

[Tom Donovan]

OK, so my own personal experience with Google Drive is that, practically-speaking, docs do not just disappear.  I may lose track of one for one reason or another, but they don't just disappear.  That's not to say it can't happen, but it's extremely rare.   Yet we've gotten a few random reports from our junior high of kids claiming they've lost docs.  Part of me thinks the kids have hit on a variation of "the dog ate my homework", but if there is actually something going on, we want to get to the bottom of it.

So my question is this:  In your experience, how often do documents just up and disappear, without any explanation?

-Tom

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Tom Donovan
Chief Technology Officer
Aptakisic-Tripp SD 102
Buffalo Grove, IL

[Jim Flanagan]

Tom

The only time I ever lost documents is when I misunderstood the way they were stored on my Linux box and deleted the wrong files from the OS and they all started to disappear from Drive. A quick trip to the Google Drive Trash corrected that.. Thankfully

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[Melissa Benson]

Tom, I have gotten reports like this from kids as well. I can't tell if it's user error or not. Luckily, we have backupify so I send them there but yeah..we have gotten similar random (very few0 reports of this. I do not know if it's legit or not..not much help lol but figured I'd chime in. I had wondered about this as well.

Melissa Benson
@mebenson
mebe...@gmail.com
www.melbenson.com

[Bjorn Behrendt]

One thing to make sure is that if the the computer goes offline while they are typing that they stop until it comes back online.    The concept of no longer needing to save with GAFE is cool, but I have seen many students ignore the big red warning block and type away then wonder why everything is missing.

Also if they are shared document inside a folder, if and editor moves them, the docs may disappear form the owners drive.   In those cases the owner can still search for the file or click the All Items and they will be there.

Bjorn Behrendt M.Ed ~ Never Stop Learning

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gClassFolders ~ Create Google folders for your class.

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[Chris Franzen]

Wish it would auto replay to the Google Apps K12 group!

"I've had some issues within the last couple days of strangeness in Google Drive.  I know I had created 2 folders with very similar names and changed it to just one.  The documents inside it were "missing" for a bit yesterday.  Everything looks good today."

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Chris Franzen

chrisf...@nokomis.k12.il.us  

Technology Coordinator | Nokomis School District

511 Oberle St. | Nokomis, IL  62075

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On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 11:51 AM, Tom Donovan <donova...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Joel Lowsky]

I agree with BJ here ... often when I've seen this it had to do with an owner moving/deleting/unsharing a document without telling others who had access to it.  When I investigate these issues I try to find out who owned the document, but students (and teachers) some times don't know!

Happy Friday.

Joel

PS: SnagIt for Chrome is awesome.  If nothing else, it's great for IT support ... screenshot errors and send them to IT instead of saying "it stopped working!"

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/techsmith-snagit/fcnghgbgmemnlbckdipnmelbanpgneik

(I have no relationship with SnagIt or Techsmith)

[Joshua Mulloy]

I haven't observed documents disappearing.  Maybe they created the document in a personal account rather than their school account?  Google Drive's new activity stream might be helpful for figuring out what happened:  http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-new-activity-stream-in-drive-shows.html

On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 12:51 PM, Tom Donovan <donova...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[John Dombrowski]

I’ve observed missing documents first hand. These documents were not shared and the computer was online.

I thought they were moved, too, until I had the teacher search for the document by it’s name. The document showed in the search, and then showed in the folder. We did this with four more documents, each time it wouldn’t show in the folder until we had seen it in the search results.

My suspicion is that they would have come back eventually, but telling a teacher to wait is akin to asking a lion to stop attacking you.

[Twyla Felty]

We have also found that documents can be located in "search". Once you have done this, they automatically appear in the proper location.
The problem for us has been that most "lost" documents belong to students, and they never remember what they named the document.
Best solution is to establish naming policies for any student created products for easy search.
Or just wait. They honestly do appear later.

Twyla Felty
TIS
Eustace Middle School
________________________________________
From: k12ap...@googlegroups.com [k12ap...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Dombrowski [jdomb...@tkschools.org]
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2014 1:42 PM
To: Tom Donovan
Cc: Google Apps K12 Technical Forum
Subject: Re: "Disappearing" docs

[Joel Lowsky]

+1 for getting all users into naming conventions!

[Andrea Bridges-Smith]

There are a few reason why documents might go missing. The most likely culprit in this case is that something happened while the doc was being synced to the cloud and the file got corrupted. Shared docs also have a tendency to get deleted by one person without them realizing that they're deleting it for everyone else too. Or someone might hit mean to hit Share but accidentally hit Delete instead (the buttons aren't too far away from each other). We have a paper on possible sources of Google Apps data loss here: http://spanning.com/resources/how-to-spot-security-gaps-in-google-apps.

Thanks!

Andrea

[Bruce Schwartz]

We had an incident today where the teacher watched the kids insert data into a lab report.  The closed it and then reopened it...all of the data was gone.  We checked revision history...nothing!  I have never seen, nor heard, of this happening.  The teacher says he definitely saw the kids' lab report with data (he watched over their shoulders).

Bruce Schwartz
Academic Technology Department Head
MS & US Academic Technology Integrator
MS Robotics Team 

Google Apps for Education Certified Trainer

The Key School
Annapolis, Maryland 21403
www.keyschool.org
Visit us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter @KeySchool

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From: k12ap...@googlegroups.com [k12ap...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Andrea Bridges-Smith [andrea.bri...@spanning.com]
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2014 3:53 PM
To: k12ap...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: "Disappearing" docs

There are a few reason why documents might go missing. The most likely culprit in this case is that something happened while the doc was being synced to the cloud and the file got corrupted. Shared docs also have a tendency to get deleted by one person without them realizing that they're deleting it for everyone else too. Or someone might hit mean to hit Share but accidentally hit Delete instead (the buttons aren't too far away from each other). We have a paper on possible sources of Google Apps data loss here: http://spanning.com/resources/how-to-spot-security-gaps-in-google-apps.

Thanks!

Andrea

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[ron.p...@paysonschools.net]

Another way that documents can vanish: Students failing to log out after using a public computer. Another student comes along and rather than logging out and then logging in, starts using the computer. They may intentionally, or by not realizing they are in another student's account, delete or move files. I suspect that this is more common where students are not yet used to using accounts on public computers,

Ron Paludan

Technician I

Payson Unified School District

Payson, AZ