Back to work blunders

Hello, remember me? Yes, I write on this blog. I know I kind of disappeared for awhile. Two words...Spring Break.  My kids have been home and consequently there was no writing, reading, or blogging accomplished during that time.  After thoroughly cleaning my house with the kids and getting through one Birthday Party (three more to go this month) I finally sat down to get back to work on my manuscript. (my personally inflicted May deadline is creeping up on me)

Now, most of you know how technologically challenged I am.  I'm pathetic really.  In fact I got a new iPhone this weekend.  I had to let Hubby play with it first and then show me how to use it. ( I can now successfully download Angry Birds and Bejeweled so I'm good to go).  Anyway, back to my editing....So one of my beta readers pointed out to me that I use a lot of 'A' and 'J' names. (and I mean A LOT) So, I decided to do 'search and replace'.  Pretty savvy right? We won't go into the fact that I had to post on fb a cry for help and eventually call a friend who showed me where to find that tool in MS Word.  So I happily go through and replace half of my character's names. 

Walla! That was fast right? WRONG.

Turns out when I said," Replace 'Allen' with 'Tanner' "  the computer thought I meant ANY sequence of those letters.  So through my ENTIRE manuscript any word like 'challenge' was now  'chTannerge' and 'fallen' was 'fTanner'.  (You get my drift?) 

So much for turning savvy into high-efficiency right?  Well, I then proceeded to spend the rest of my writing time correcting those errors.  Here's hoping I can make it through today without inherently sabotaging my work with technology.