New documents added with ~$ in first 2 places of title - why?

[charlon]

When I open a document I often find a new document has been automatically
produced with ~$ replacing the first two characters of the title. This
document will have a string of "boxes" and what appear to be users initials
included. I have little knowledge of what goes on in Word, (or computers!).
I always delete these files with no apparent ill effect.

Any help or advice? It will be appreciated - thanks!

charlon

 

[lauralee08]

Hi,
Those are basically temp files that Windows sets up. If your computer or
program goes 'kerplooie' and kicks you out before you can save your document,
this is the last version that will come up as a recovered file. I believe
the file will update with your changes every few mintes or so, and it just
saves you from yourself if you haven't saved the file.
Lauralee

 

[charlon]

Thanks Lauralee!

Wow! You are fast; thanks so much. Good of persons like yourself to help new
ones, who haven't "read the manual", through the fog.

Best wishes for '08!

Charles

 

[Jay Freedman]

Although they are temp files created by Word, the ~$ files aren't the ones that
appear as recovered files after a crash. Instead, those are "owner" files that
are responsible for telling Word that this document is already open, and that
any more copies should be made read-only. If you're on a network, the name you
see in the "this document is already in use by..." message comes from the ~$
file.

The various kinds of temp files Word uses are described at
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211632.

The recovery files, which aren't temp files, have an extension of .asd. Although
people think that Word can save their bacon with these files, their usefulness
is very limited. See http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm for
something that will really do the job.

 

[charlon]

Thanks Jay!!

The link to MSVP FAQ is much appreciated and gives me access to more than
I'll ever need, but certainly to everything I may ever wan't!

The best to you,

Charles

 

[charlon]

No edit available?! (Even just one uncorrectable typo can be very annoying!)

Also, I didn't say what I meant to!

Jay, I was confused with the link; the one I really found helpful is
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211632. The MSVP is a bit too
far out! The backup program I'll look into.

Thanks again,

charlon

P.S. And NO preview of post!