I have been using AbiWord for the last few months working on a major project. I have gotten very far in my writing, but yesterday as soon as I pressed save my computer died. I did not think of it as a big deal until today I tried to open the file and it says "error unable to import [file name]". I downloaded a new software to open the file, and it opened, but the text is reading "##########". Is there anyway to open this file without losing all of the hard work I have spent months doing?
SnapOverflow
I would suggest using LibreOffice instead of AbiWord. I do use AbiWord at home only because it can print free barcodes I can use for work and LibreOffice cannot. Other than that AbiWord flickers inexplicably and lags every now and then. AbiWord doesn't even come close to the power of LibreOffice.
The issue of backups is important. As a minimum copying your documents folder to a USB flash drive after 10 or 20 hours of work is a good idea. The advantage is you can take your backup with you if your laptop burns down while you are away from home.
I have a more exotic automatic backup that copies all my writings for five years plus system configuration / settings I've made to tweak Ubuntu. Files are copied into a
.tararchive which is compressed and emailed to my gmail account. The advantage of gmail is you can access your backups anywhere in the world and don't have to carry a USB thumb drive around in your pocket/purse. Gmail gives you 15 free GB of space which for me is a couple of years of daily backups before I have to start pruning (deleting) older backups. The setup is described here:I've answered other parts of your question in comments and after resolution the comments can be rolled up into this answer.