Hi Virginia:
I don't know if I'm going to be much help. I took your post and put it into Word 2007 on my machine and did a whole bunch of mods like you describe. I did get everything erased when I went back far enough and came up with the original blank file.
I guess my suggestion is to use the "save" frequently between changes. I know it is easy to loose track of the changes when doing a lot of them.
Quote
it pretends I have selected the entire document
I couldn't recreate that. That has me flummoxed, but you can try the solution below:
Another option is to save versions if you aren't sure about what you've changed and might want to change it again.
You can always save a "master" file or a "template" that you can go back to if the whole thing goes into destruct mode.
I use that trick frequently when I do my artwork and have several versions that I want to choose from later.
Good luck.
Artemis

History is easy once you've lived it. - Duncan MacLeod
Writing history is easy once you've lived it. - Artemis