Blank Documents

[rwj1nra]

I have a user that seems to posses the unique skill of being able to erase
documents just by opening them. Any one ever heard of anything like this?
Got any suggestions? Can't find anything wrong. Sometimes, when she opens a
document, weither she makes changes or not, and closes, when she goes back in
the document is blank. The size of the document has been reduced to 0. The
modification date never changes.

 

[Anne Troy]

Sounds strange. Have you turned on backups under Tools-->Options, Save?
*******************
~Anne Troy

www.OfficeArticles.com
www.MyExpertsOnline.com

 

[rwj1nra]

Many times she's not in the application long enough for a backup to start.
Sometimes its just long enough to open see that there is data, close, then
reopen to find it empty.

 

[Anne Troy]

Take the machine away from her. I'm sorry...I've never heard it before,
and it makes no sense.
*******************
~Anne Troy

www.OfficeArticles.com
www.MyExpertsOnline.com

 

[rwj1nra]

Well, I've already done that. But, I'm afraid at some point her managers are
going to start asking about why she doesn't have a computer.

 

[TF]

With so very little to go on, my guess is that she is starting a paragraph
or sentence with an upper case A, but instead of pressing Shift+a, she is
pressing Control+a (SelectAll) and the next character she presses (a space)
replaces the whole document. She then panics and saves the virtually empty
document.



: Well, I've already done that. But, I'm afraid at some point her managers
are
: going to start asking about why she doesn't have a computer.
:
: "Anne Troy" wrote:
:
: > Take the machine away from her. I'm sorry...I've never heard it
before,
: > and it makes no sense.
: > *******************
: > ~Anne Troy
: >
: > www.OfficeArticles.com
: > www.MyExpertsOnline.com
: >
: >
: > : > > Many times she's not in the application long enough for a backup to
start.
: > > Sometimes its just long enough to open see that there is data, close,
then
: > > reopen to find it empty.
: > >
: > > "Anne Troy" wrote:
: > >
: > > > Sounds strange. Have you turned on backups under Tools-->Options,
Save?
: > > > *******************
: > > > ~Anne Troy
: > > >
: > > > www.OfficeArticles.com
: > > > www.MyExpertsOnline.com
: > > >
: > > >
: > > > : > > > > I have a user that seems to posses the unique skill of being able
to
: > erase
: > > > > documents just by opening them. Any one ever heard of anything
like
: > this?
: > > > > Got any suggestions? Can't find anything wrong. Sometimes, when
she
: > > > opens a
: > > > > document, weither she makes changes or not, and closes, when she
goes
: > back
: > > > in
: > > > > the document is blank. The size of the document has been reduced
to
: > 0.
: > > > The
: > > > > modification date never changes.
: > > >
: > > >
: > > >
: >
: >
: >

 

[rwj1nra]

Thanks for the input, that is a really good idea. The only problem is that
she claims to not even be editing sometimes when this occurs. She also
claims to have just open saved documents to view the material, and then just
close it. Along with that, the modification date never changes, from the
last time she actually made changes. For example, she had a file created on
6/6 which she saved 6/6 and had been using to reference and create pdfs from
between the 6th and the begining of this week. Then the document went blank,
but the last modified date is still 6/6.

I'm at a loss. I'm been running through this machine myself for the past
2 days. Ran all sorts of Virus scanns, spyware scans. Manually looked
through the system directories for anything that stuck out. No abnormal
processes running in Task manager. I can't duplicate the problem, but
neither can she. I'd sware it was user error, but the modification dates on
the files don't change. Any further help is greatly appriecated.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Let's take a different tack... In your original post, you said that
"The size of the document has been reduced to 0." Do you mean that the
file size reported in Windows Explorer is 0? If so, this is not Word's
doing -- if you save an empty document in Word, the minimum file size
is around 19 KB. You can't make a zero-byte file in Word.

I suspect something is incorrectly modifying the file table on the
disk. This is more probable if the disk is formatted as FAT16 or
FAT32, less likely if it's NTFS. In the older FAT schemes, the
start-of-file pointer or the file size, or both, could be damaged
without causing any error message to be displayed.

Try running CHKDSK to see if it reports any problems on the drive. If
that is the problem, an undelete utility or a sector editor may be
able to recover the documents.

 

[rwj1nra]

Great thoughts. I verified, on the machine blank word documents do as you
said save at 19kb and the files in questions are 0. I ran a chkdsk, found no
bad sectors or errors. The partition on the system is NTFS. Also, some of
the files that have zeroed out, are on the network, on her user share.

Thanks for the help, and please tell me you've got more ideas!

 

[Jay Freedman]

The only thing of this sort I could find in the KB said it occurred
only in Windows 95 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138014).

We're now in voodoo territory. Try the kind of temp-file cleanup
recommended at http://word.mvps.org/faqs/apperrors/LockedFiles.htm and
http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm.

 

[rwj1nra]

Thanks! In the midst of trying all this now. If there are any other Voodoo
doctors out there i'd love to hear something else that might allow me to find
a more definite answer. Thanks all.

 

[rwj1nra]

I switched the computers out, and the problem reoccurred. At this point I'm
guessing that it has something to do with the size of the word document. It
is 115mb. Any one every heard of size limits for Word documents?

 

[Jay Freedman]

The only documented limit is 32 MB for the text in the document
(http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211489). Adding graphics can push that
much higher, theoretically to the maximum amount of virtual memory available
on the machine. In practical terms, something that big is likely to run slow
as molasses because of background pagination. As for whether it could cause
the zero-byte file symptom -- I don't know, but it probably doesn't help.

If the document is loaded with embedded graphics, try using linked graphics
instead.