error: document is being used, do you want to make a copy?

[Joe Shulkin]

Can anyone make sense of this? I've just started getting
this error when I open a word document: "File is being
used by (my user account name), do you want to make a
copy?" I can simply click out of it and use the document
normally, it's not corrupted, but it's really annoying
and baffling. I'm using Word 97 and XP Home Edition, and
had been doing so for a year without encountering this
problem. In no instance has the file already been open in
Word or any other program. I am the only user of the
machine, and the only log in account. I even tried
logging off in order to log back on with my account name,
the one that appears in the error message, but I still
get the same error. Any thoughts would be much
appreciated.

 

[RWN]

Joe;
Somewhere along the line the word had some trouble and didn't clean up
after itself.
With Word shut down (safer that way!) take a look in the directory where
this document is located and look for a filename prefixed with a "~$".

Delete it (and any others that may be hanging around).

BTW - if you open it you'll see your name displayed, that's how it
"knows" who has the document "in use".
It creates a file like this anytime you open a document and the file is
usually in the directory where the document is located .

HTH
--
Regards;
Rob

Please reply to the NG, I'm already up to my eyeballs in Nigerian/South
African get rich letters
as well as "Microsoft Critical Updates" et al.

 

[Joe Shulkin]

Thanks, I appreciate the reply, but that's not the
culprit.

 

[Cath G]

Hey, Joe. Are you on a network? Do you have multiple
logons for your PC? You say that you've been using your
s/w for a year without problem - so what happened/did you
do before the problem occurred?

regards

Cath G

 

[Joe Shulkin]

No, not on a network and I'm the only user account. The
only thing I did prior to this was re-install my dsl
service which had gone down due to the fires out here in
Southern Ca. I can't see how that would cause this, but I
did try disabling it just to see, and it didn't fix the
problem. Again, I appreciate people trying to help me
figure this out. I originally thought this would be a
common and easily resolveable problem, but I can't find
anything like it in any of the knowledge bases or in
previous posts to this newsgroup.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi Joe

It sounds like lock files are not being deleted. See

http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/DocInUse.htm

 

[Joe Shulkin]

I went to that site, but that specific link didn't work.
I looked through some similar items in the Faq and based
on that deleted all my .tmp and .do? files then ran scan
disk and defrag - and still received the same message. I
also used the term lock file to search the microsoft
knowledge base and came up with several articles that
indicated this error would occur if the author of the
document and user name didn't match - however, they
match. I do appreciate you response and it did point me
to the correct error message, but so far no change.
Thanks.

 

[Joe Shulkin]

I went to that site, but that specific link didn't work.
I looked through some similar items in the Faq and based
on that deleted all my .tmp and .do? files then ran scan
disk and defrag - and still received the same message. I
also used the term lock file to search the microsoft
knowledge base and came up with several articles that
indicated this error would occur if the author of the
document and user name didn't match - however, they
match. I do appreciate you response and it did point me
to the correct error message, but so far no change.
Thanks.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The link does work for me--don't know why it doesn't for you--but
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/LockedFiles.htm is a similar and
more comprehensive article. Did you reboot Windows?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Joe Shulkin]

The link is working now. I followed the more
comprehensive one, on locked files, to the letter. About
a two hour process with several reboots and I'm still
getting the same message. What I'm experiencing is
slightly different than what those articles describe. I
get the same initial error message, but I'm able to click
through it and both access and edit the documents -
numerous documents are affected, the more I check the
more I find, but not all. And I can't find any
distinction between the ones that have the error message
and the ones that don't. As I said in an earlier post, I
also checked to see if the author and the name attributes
were the same, and they are. Bottom line is, I guess I
can live with it if I have to, but I would like to get
rid of it if I can.