Corrupted Documents

[George Lee]

In our very large company, we have documents that have been around for years,
been modified by many users, and on different computers. As a result, the
documents are getting corrupted. This includes numbering that gets moved,
revisions that come and go by themselves, and headers realigning to name a
few.

Is there any way to restore the document or fix these corruptions?

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi George

If a document is corrupt, then see
How can I recover a corrupt document or template - and why did it become
corrupt?
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm

However, the symptoms you describe don't sound to me like you have a corrupt
document.

numbering that gets moved

I assume that the numbers don't physically move from one location in the
document to another. Is the problem that the numbers are no longer
sequential?

First, open the document and do Tools > Templates and Add-ins. Is the
Automatically update document styles box ticked? If so, that may be causing
the numbering problems. Ensure that box is un-ticked.

Second, on the status bar at the bottom of the screen, is TRK dark? If so,
Word is tracking changes. Double-click it to turn off tracking.

Finally, make sure you don't have any old tracked changes in the document.
In Word 2002 and 2003, use View > Toolbars and turn on the Reviewing
toolbar. Click the blue right-pointing "Next" arrow. Do you get a message
that says "The document contains no comments or tracked changes."? If not,
then the document contains comments or tracked changes. Accept or reject the
changes using the buttons on the toolbar.

For more information see
How does Track Changes in Microsoft Word work?
http://www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/trackchanges/HowTrackChangesWorks.html

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word

 

[NZ VBA Developer]

G'day George,

Further to Shauna's recommendations: It sounds to me like most of the
problems are style related. I'd be willing to bet that many of the problem
documents are based on the Normal template. If a user has modified their
"local" version of a particular style - and, as Shauna mentioned, the
'Automatically update document styles' box is ticked - when they open the doc
it will use the modified style from the user's machine. Clearing the
'Automatically update document styles' box will stop styles from changing,
but only on the machines that don't have this box checked. And in a large
company, getting everyone to clear this checkbox may be a bit... problematic.
(The Network Elves may be able to help through the use of a login script or
group policy or something.)

Another aid to resolving this problem is to use a macro to reset the styles
in a particular document to the "corporate standard" styles. This is easy
enough to do but will only last until someone who has the 'Automatically
update document styles' box ticked opens and resaves the document - at which
point their local styles are applied to the document once again and you're
back where you started. BTW, with just a bit more effort you can set up the
macro to allow users to reset the styles in their Normal to the corp std as
well.

A more stable approach would be to break the connection between the Normal
template and the documents (assuming that the docs are based on Normal).
Create a template that has the styles you want to use and then attach the
docs to this template instead of Normal. Select - and then IMMEDIATELY clear
- the 'Automatically update document styles' box to update the styles in the
doc with the styles in the template. I think if you make the template
read-only you can stop people from modifying the styles in the template -
altho if I'm wrong about this I'm sure someone in the forum will correct me.


As for the revisions that automagically appear and disappear, again Shauna's
recommendation about tracked changes is on point, and accepting all changes
in the doc and then turning off tracked changes will go a long way toward
resolving the problem. However, whether tracked changes are visible or not
may be related to the version of Word that you're using and the "revisions
view" (for want of a better term) that each user has specified. For example,
if you are using Word 2003 you will see a dropdown on the left end of the
Revisions toolbar with options like 'Final Showing Markup', 'Final', etc. Any
option that mentions "showing markup" will make the revisions visible; any
that doesn't won't.

Hopefully there's something in all this that you can use. Post back if you
have any questions about the details.