Document vanishes after saving!

[JiRo]

hello. i have two infuriating issues with Word at the moment.

1. I opened an attached document in Live Mail, and it opens obediently in
Word 2007. Then after editing, when I save it, it automatically saves under
exactly the same file name. The question is this: after which I closed Word,
and I could not find the edited document! I tried reopening the same document
in the email, but what Word In other words, after saving the attachment copy,
it just vanishes! I tried searching for it, but could not find traces of it
at all. I repeated the whole process once more, and the status bar would
automatically save the document as example(2).doc, example(3).doc and so on
to a mystery location! I knew I ought to have 'save as' the attached .doc
file from the received email, but this is still unacceptable. Can anyone
provide an explanation?

2. Also, when copying some highlighted text from a website (e.g. Wikipedia),
pasting it onto a word document would almost certainly summon a few seconds
of waiting time, during which a message which reads 'Word is trying to
connect to the server...' would appear in the status bar. Can someone explain
what's this all about, and if possible how to turn off this irritating
'feature'?

Other than that, I love Word 2007!
Thanks.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

When you open a document directly from an email attachment, a copy is saved
in a temporary folder. Every time you save, you're saving that temp file,
which is (probably) deleted when you quit Word or Windows. To be sure of
saving it, you must Save As, either before or after opening the document.

When you paste text or graphics from a Web page, you may be including links
to a server outside your computer. If you paste as unformatted text, you may
avoid the delay.

 

[Jay Freedman]

You already have the solution for the first issue, as you said "I knew I ought
to have 'save as' the attached .doc file from the received email". That's really
the _only_ way to work with attachments that you intend to edit.

The reason is that when you open an attachment directly from an email, you're
working on a copy that's stored in a temporary folder. After you close Word,
you've implicitly given Windows permission to delete the temporary folder,
including any changes you made in the file. It may or may not do so immediately.
You _might_ find the file in its temporary folder by searching for words or
phrases that occur in the document, after setting the search to include hidden
folders; if you do find it, immediately save it to a permanent location.

What's unacceptable to me is only the failure of Word to explain what's going on
and warn you of possible data loss. Now that you're educated about the issue,
don't do it again.

The delay on copying from a web page usually means that what you see on the page
has been linked in from some other page on another server. Because of the way
web pages are rendered, a Copy operation can't use the in-memory picture or
whatever that content is; it has to go back to the original on the other server
and load it into a different part of memory. There is no way to "turn off this
feature" because it isn't a feature.