Modified MS Office attachment won't save changes

[Ginswich]

Hello,

One friend of mine has had a problem with an attachment and I've tried to
help her, with no success, and I hardly know what have happened:

She open an attachment (a Microsoft Office 2007 .docx) from gmail (i.e.,
first selected "download attachment" and after "open attachment"), she made
some changes in the file, saved the file (selecting the option "save" instead
of "save as") and quit MS Office. The result is that the modified file has
disappeared. I've looked for it in Windows temp files and internet temp
files, and it is not there either. And of course, the mail attachment remains
unchanged.

I've also made some tests following the same steps and I've not been able to
recover the tests files used, despite having saved them several times (note
that the selected option is save, and not "save as", with "save as" the file
is correctly saved).

So I suppose the modified-and-pseudo-saved file is definitively lost, as it
is nowhere. So, my question is: this would be a gmail problem or a MS Office
2007 problem? Or if I'm wrong and the modified file can be recovered somehow,
then, how?

Thanks.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

See http://www.gmayor.com/outlook_attachments.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Ginswich]

Thank you for your reply.

I did thought that the file might be stored in the temporary files, but it
wasn't (may be because my friend was using gmail instead of outlook and gmail
manages differently the temp files).

But, in any case, if Word is not going to save the file, despite the user
saves it (with save, not save as), I think Word should alert the user with a
pop-up message or similar, or deactivate the save (not save as) option. Let
the user think his/her changes are being saved but not do so in a persistent
way may cause lots of upset...

 

[Terry Farrell]

It does save the file but in the same location that it was opened from. In
this case, it is a temporary Internet file and will be found in that folder.
This is not just Word, if you download any attachment from GMail or HotMail,
the attachment is in the temporary Internet folder until you save it
somewhere else.

Terry