sales order record has null values

SOLVED

today we came across something quite bizarre.  A user created a shipment however when she went to tunnel to the sales order from the shipment screen there was an error 'no transaction authorized' .  I went into the sales order function and could not locate the sales order.   I then went to table maintenance on the SORDER table and while the record exists all the fields have a null value.   Fortunately we recently copied our production folder so I was able to compare the SORDER table between the current and former versions.  only the customer# and SO number displayed in the fields of SORDER.  All other fields were blank.  I then compared the SORDERQ table between folders and all was well there.

so my question is- how can something like this happen?  Has anyone experienced anything like this before?  I advised the user to delete the shipment and re-enter a new sales order however for reporting purposes this SO will not display since all fields are null.  I don't even know how to go about duplicating the issue.

Please advise if anyone else has seen this or has an idea on how this can happen. 

Thanks,

Christine