Error Saving Correct Changes in MS Word 2007

[stardivine]

Hi there,

I was wondering if there is a solution to this problem I'm having.
I've been working on revising my thesis using MS Word 2007, a very
large document, on Windows XP, with all service packs and MS Updates
installed. I make changes to the thesis on a daily basis, and save the
file onto my HDD as well as on my USB external HDD every time I make a
change on the document, which is around every two to five minutes when
I'm working. I get a file permission error when I try to save the
changes manually (by clicking the Save icon or the Save As.. option).
Regardless of whether I try to save on the HDD or the USB drive, I get
a file permission error every now and then.

So far, my tactic has been to wait until the program will allow me to
save the changes. I try to save a few times, pause, and try again. But
this in itself is frustrating. And then, last night after completing a
save after a long wait, the file was incorrectly saved. This morning I
found different versions of the file I was trying to save on my HDD
(all with the same name, on my HDD and my USB drive), and had to sift
through each document to compile them all into a new document.

Is that really necessary? I've never had problems like this before. At
my office PC, using Office 2003, I can save every 30 seconds to both
USB drive and HDD with no problems. I think I would like to be able to
manually save my documents again, without worrying whether MS Word got
it right.

What can I do? I've set the save preferences to save every 5 minutes,
I have Norton Antivirus, and my computer is connected to a home
network.

Hope you can help, I'd like to get to the root of this problem soon,
and get back to work.

 

[Terry Farrell]

The problem is probably saving to your USB HDD. You should NEVER work with
any type of removable media directly with Word. What you need to do is to
work ONLY with the main version on your local HDD and then every now and
then, COPY the .doct to the USB HDD overwriting the previous version.

By saving the document to your USB HDD, it becomes the 'active' drive and
Word will start creating the temp files it needs to keep track of edits and
other format changes you make on the active drive, so there is now a set of
current temp files on the USB drive and a set of outdated temp files on the
main drive. This will confuse Word. So stick to just the local HDD for
actually working on the files and only copy to the backup copy.

You will find a FAQ explaining how to automatically back up a Word document:

http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm

 

[jacklee_2001]

Hi, I'm having the same problem that Stardivine is having, except that it
happens even if I'm only saving my file to my laptop's hard disk and not to
any removable media. What can I do about it? I've lost data several times,
and am finding this very frustrating.