"Recovered Files" Always in Trash

[Mark Pedretti]

Hey All, I'm hoping you can help me with something that seems to be going on
with Word. I'm new to both OS X and Word 2004 (just did a massive upgrade
from a beige G3 to a MacBook Pro, and everything is up to date), so bear
with me.

The problem is pretty simple: every time I use Word, on the next startup
there is a "Recovered Files" folder full of "Word Work File x_x" files in
the Trash. I'm not talking about crash situations (I don't think I've
crashed the Mac or Word yet), and I'm not actually losing any data or
anything. This is just annoying; I'm something of a neat freak with my Mac,
and it is frustrating to start up the computer and find a full trash can
every single time. The problem seems to be that Word is not deleting its
temporary docs but instead just moving them to the Trash.

Since this is a pretty minor nuisance, I'm hoping there is a pretty minor
solution. I just tried repairing disk permissions with Disk Utility, and
while it fixed a few things, there was nothing that obviously belonged to
Word. Any thoughts?

 

[Phillip Jones]

Actually its doing as its supposed to.

The files are backup work files That word uses if it should have a
crash. It would use these work files as a backup because supposedly when
word crashes it will corrupt the original.

If nothing happens it supposed to clean up these work files and send
them to Trash.

Glad its working that way for you. On both my Laptop 17" and my Desktop
G4-500 neither does that for me. They are actually saved on my hard
Drive. The last time I remember them working correctly was when I was
using Word 6.0.1.a on a OS 9 Hard Drive.

Best thing is just look and see if its anything out of the ordinary from
time to time. If nothing unusual just empty trash and go about your
business.

Hey All, I'm hoping you can help me with something that seems to be going on
with Word. I'm new to both OS X and Word 2004 (just did a massive upgrade
from a beige G3 to a MacBook Pro, and everything is up to date), so bear
with me.

The problem is pretty simple: every time I use Word, on the next startup
there is a "Recovered Files" folder full of "Word Work File x_x" files in
the Trash. I'm not talking about crash situations (I don't think I've
crashed the Mac or Word yet), and I'm not actually losing any data or
anything. This is just annoying; I'm something of a neat freak with my Mac,
and it is frustrating to start up the computer and find a full trash can
every single time. The problem seems to be that Word is not deleting its
temporary docs but instead just moving them to the Trash.

Since this is a pretty minor nuisance, I'm hoping there is a pretty minor
solution. I just tried repairing disk permissions with Disk Utility, and
while it fixed a few things, there was nothing that obviously belonged to
Word. Any thoughts?

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[Mark Pedretti]

Thanks, Phillip. It's good to know that everything is working properly. As
I said in my original post, I did just come from Word 6 where the work files
were automatically deleted without a stopover at the trash, and so I
expected (silly me) that that same functionality would be in the newer
version of Word. But it seems like it SHOULD work the way I want it to. I
suppose I'll have to write an Applescript to delete them on startup. Unless
anyone else has any other ideas...

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Mark:

Keep looking: That's not a normal situation.

I don't know what's causing it, but it's not right.

I suggest that your User ID may not have "Remove" permissions to the system
Temp directory (which is where the work files should be).

However, we'll have to wait for someone who knows a lot more about Unix than
me to happen along to tell you how to check/repair this.

Before installing Office 2004, did you take care to UNINSTALL the Test Drive
version that ships with your new computer? If not, that's your problem.
Run the Remove Office utility (see below) to remove both, then re-install
Office 2004.

Having installed, did you run the 11.3 Updater from the Microsoft website?
Do that next, and see if it resolves the issue. Save the 11.3 Updater to
the hard disk: you will need it again if you have to Remove, you will need
to run it again when you re-install.

When you installed Word, did you drag-and-drop, or use the Installer? It
may be worth running the Remove Office utility you will find in your
Microsoft Office 2004 folder, then running the installer to put it back.
You may have a component in the wrong place...

Hope this helps

Hey All, I'm hoping you can help me with something that seems to be going on
with Word. I'm new to both OS X and Word 2004 (just did a massive upgrade
from a beige G3 to a MacBook Pro, and everything is up to date), so bear
with me.

The problem is pretty simple: every time I use Word, on the next startup
there is a "Recovered Files" folder full of "Word Work File x_x" files in
the Trash. I'm not talking about crash situations (I don't think I've
crashed the Mac or Word yet), and I'm not actually losing any data or
anything. This is just annoying; I'm something of a neat freak with my Mac,
and it is frustrating to start up the computer and find a full trash can
every single time. The problem seems to be that Word is not deleting its
temporary docs but instead just moving them to the Trash.

Since this is a pretty minor nuisance, I'm hoping there is a pretty minor
solution. I just tried repairing disk permissions with Disk Utility, and
while it fixed a few things, there was nothing that obviously belonged to
Word. Any thoughts?

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Phillip Jones]

John in my Case I always use the installer as opposed to drag and drop
method. and yet the work files are actually save to my hard drive in the
directory (folder) that the document is saved in.

Hi Mark:

Keep looking: That's not a normal situation.

I don't know what's causing it, but it's not right.

I suggest that your User ID may not have "Remove" permissions to the system
Temp directory (which is where the work files should be).

Where is this located.

Both my install on my Desktop and my laptop save work files in the same
Folder as the document I am saving on both machines.

However, we'll have to wait for someone who knows a lot more about Unix than
me to happen along to tell you how to check/repair this.

Before installing Office 2004, did you take care to UNINSTALL the Test Drive
version that ships with your new computer? If not, that's your problem.
Run the Remove Office utility (see below) to remove both, then re-install
Office 2004.

Having installed, did you run the 11.3 Updater from the Microsoft website?
Do that next, and see if it resolves the issue. Save the 11.3 Updater to
the hard disk: you will need it again if you have to Remove, you will need
to run it again when you re-install.

When you installed Word, did you drag-and-drop, or use the Installer? It
may be worth running the Remove Office utility you will find in your
Microsoft Office 2004 folder, then running the installer to put it back.
You may have a component in the wrong place...

Hope this helps

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Phillip:

You're right: my bad... I'm getting my wires crossed The Word work
files should indeed be in the document current folder, and should be deleted
when Word quits normally.

I believe Word also keeps temp files in the "Temporary Items" folder, which
is invisible unless you're logged in as root...

The user should never see them, and they should not be in the Trash

Cheers

John in my Case I always use the installer as opposed to drag and drop
method. and yet the work files are actually save to my hard drive in the
directory (folder) that the document is saved in.


Where is this located.

Both my install on my Desktop and my laptop save work files in the same
Folder as the document I am saving on both machines.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Mark Pedretti]

Hi John and Phillip:

OK, now we're getting somewhere...

John, I ran the 11.3 updater, even though I'm pretty sure I'd run it before
(there was an installer log for it, and AutoUpdate said I was up to date).
But I ran it anyway, and it definitely created some files, although it was
likely just overwriting identical files. Still no luck.

As for reinstalling, I haven't tried it yet, mostly because of time and
needing Word for some serious projects right now. But I THINK I uninstalled
the Test Drive before installing Office (I'm pretty sure that's in the
documentation), and I installed Office from the installer, not drag and
drop. I may jump off the cliff pretty soon and do the reinstall, though; I
just need to gather my templates, etc.

But I'm more intrigued by the idea of fixing the permissions on the
Temporary Items folder, which seems like it might be a "quick fix" (wishful
thinking). Being new to OS X and Unix, I have no idea how to do this. As
you said, we might need a Unix Jedi to come along and explain this. But
there must be some way to do this. How do you log in as root?

So I don't really have anything new to report on my problem; maybe I'll just
take half an hour and try the reinstall.

Best, Mark

 

[Phillip Jones]

Well I see the stuff in the recovered file in Trash all the time.

they tend to have names such as tzzzzzzlllllll or some such. Tends more

Hi Phillip:

You're right: my bad... I'm getting my wires crossed The Word work
files should indeed be in the document current folder, and should be deleted
when Word quits normally.

I believe Word also keeps temp files in the "Temporary Items" folder, which
is invisible unless you're logged in as root...

The user should never see them, and they should not be in the Trash

Cheers

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[Mark Pedretti]

OK, just to be clear, for me, the only stuff I am getting in the trash is
the "Word Work File x_x" file, for the most part.

So I just tried doing the Uninstall of Office. Here's what happened: I ran
the app, clicked through the dialogues to delete everything, and then when I
restarted the Office suite was still there, even though the uninstaller had
deleted basically all of the preference files (at least based on the
contents of my Trash). Curious. I wonder if this could be related.

But hopeful, I started running Word again, without doing the full reinstall
that John recommended (how could I?). I did some work and sure enough on my
next restart the "Recovered Files" folder showed up again. Sigh.

Well I see the stuff in the recovered file in Trash all the time.

they tend to have names such as tzzzzzzlllllll or some such. Tends more

Hi Phillip:

You're right: my bad... I'm getting my wires crossed The Word work
files should indeed be in the document current folder, and should be deleted
when Word quits normally.

I believe Word also keeps temp files in the "Temporary Items" folder, which
is invisible unless you're logged in as root...

The user should never see them, and they should not be in the Trash

Cheers

John in my Case I always use the installer as opposed to drag and drop
method. and yet the work files are actually save to my hard drive in the
directory (folder) that the document is saved in.

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote:
Hi Mark:

Keep looking: That's not a normal situation.

I don't know what's causing it, but it's not right.

I suggest that your User ID may not have "Remove" permissions to the system
Temp directory (which is where the work files should be).
Where is this located.

Both my install on my Desktop and my laptop save work files in the same
Folder as the document I am saving on both machines.
However, we'll have to wait for someone who knows a lot more about Unix
than
me to happen along to tell you how to check/repair this.

Before installing Office 2004, did you take care to UNINSTALL the Test
Drive
version that ships with your new computer? If not, that's your problem.
Run the Remove Office utility (see below) to remove both, then re-install
Office 2004.

Having installed, did you run the 11.3 Updater from the Microsoft website?
Do that next, and see if it resolves the issue. Save the 11.3 Updater to
the hard disk: you will need it again if you have to Remove, you will need
to run it again when you re-install.

When you installed Word, did you drag-and-drop, or use the Installer? It
may be worth running the Remove Office utility you will find in your
Microsoft Office 2004 folder, then running the installer to put it back.
You may have a component in the wrong place...

Hope this helps


On 14/11/06 5:23 AM, in article C17DF804.29C3%[email protected],

Hey All, I'm hoping you can help me with something that seems to be going
on
with Word. I'm new to both OS X and Word 2004 (just did a massive upgrade
from a beige G3 to a MacBook Pro, and everything is up to date), so bear
with me.

The problem is pretty simple: every time I use Word, on the next startup
there is a "Recovered Files" folder full of "Word Work File x_x" files in
the Trash. I'm not talking about crash situations (I don't think I've
crashed the Mac or Word yet), and I'm not actually losing any data or
anything. This is just annoying; I'm something of a neat freak with my
Mac,
and it is frustrating to start up the computer and find a full trash can
every single time. The problem seems to be that Word is not deleting its
temporary docs but instead just moving them to the Trash.

Since this is a pretty minor nuisance, I'm hoping there is a pretty minor
solution. I just tried repairing disk permissions with Disk Utility, and
while it fixed a few things, there was nothing that obviously belonged to
Word. Any thoughts?

 

[Mark Pedretti]

Further update: I just tried to do the uninstall/reinstall again, and this
time it worked. The uninstaller deleted all the apps and prefs and
everything else, and I reinstalled and updates successfully. Just tried
doing some typing in Word, working on a document, saved it, closed the app,
restarted, and back comes the "Recovered Files" folder, with "Word Work File
x_x" files in it. So the reinstall did not work.

Which takes us back to changing the permissions for the Temporary Items
folder. Someone figure out how to do this. Is it possible that I need to
install Office from the root user?

OK, just to be clear, for me, the only stuff I am getting in the trash is
the "Word Work File x_x" file, for the most part.

So I just tried doing the Uninstall of Office. Here's what happened: I ran
the app, clicked through the dialogues to delete everything, and then when I
restarted the Office suite was still there, even though the uninstaller had
deleted basically all of the preference files (at least based on the
contents of my Trash). Curious. I wonder if this could be related.

But hopeful, I started running Word again, without doing the full reinstall
that John recommended (how could I?). I did some work and sure enough on my
next restart the "Recovered Files" folder showed up again. Sigh.

Well I see the stuff in the recovered file in Trash all the time.

they tend to have names such as tzzzzzzlllllll or some such. Tends more

Hi Phillip:

You're right: my bad... I'm getting my wires crossed The Word work
files should indeed be in the document current folder, and should be deleted
when Word quits normally.

I believe Word also keeps temp files in the "Temporary Items" folder, which
is invisible unless you're logged in as root...

The user should never see them, and they should not be in the Trash

Cheers


On 15/11/06 12:56 PM, in article (e-mail address removed),

John in my Case I always use the installer as opposed to drag and drop
method. and yet the work files are actually save to my hard drive in the
directory (folder) that the document is saved in.

John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh] wrote:
Hi Mark:

Keep looking: That's not a normal situation.

I don't know what's causing it, but it's not right.

I suggest that your User ID may not have "Remove" permissions to the
system
Temp directory (which is where the work files should be).
Where is this located.

Both my install on my Desktop and my laptop save work files in the same
Folder as the document I am saving on both machines.
However, we'll have to wait for someone who knows a lot more about Unix
than
me to happen along to tell you how to check/repair this.

Before installing Office 2004, did you take care to UNINSTALL the Test
Drive
version that ships with your new computer? If not, that's your problem.
Run the Remove Office utility (see below) to remove both, then re-install
Office 2004.

Having installed, did you run the 11.3 Updater from the Microsoft website?
Do that next, and see if it resolves the issue. Save the 11.3 Updater to
the hard disk: you will need it again if you have to Remove, you will need
to run it again when you re-install.

When you installed Word, did you drag-and-drop, or use the Installer? It
may be worth running the Remove Office utility you will find in your
Microsoft Office 2004 folder, then running the installer to put it back.
You may have a component in the wrong place...

Hope this helps


On 14/11/06 5:23 AM, in article C17DF804.29C3%[email protected],

Hey All, I'm hoping you can help me with something that seems to be going
on
with Word. I'm new to both OS X and Word 2004 (just did a massive
upgrade
from a beige G3 to a MacBook Pro, and everything is up to date), so bear
with me.

The problem is pretty simple: every time I use Word, on the next startup
there is a "Recovered Files" folder full of "Word Work File x_x" files in
the Trash. I'm not talking about crash situations (I don't think I've
crashed the Mac or Word yet), and I'm not actually losing any data or
anything. This is just annoying; I'm something of a neat freak with my
Mac,
and it is frustrating to start up the computer and find a full trash can
every single time. The problem seems to be that Word is not deleting its
temporary docs but instead just moving them to the Trash.

Since this is a pretty minor nuisance, I'm hoping there is a pretty minor
solution. I just tried repairing disk permissions with Disk Utility, and
while it fixed a few things, there was nothing that obviously belonged to
Word. Any thoughts?

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Mark,

I've only half followed this thread (catching up with three days of posts!)
so I'm not sure this will help but ...

The common way to change permissions on a file (or folder) is to click once
to select it and then do a Get Info (Cmd>i). Only I'm not sure that's the
type of "permissions" that were meant here. Someone else will have to
comment on this.

Also, while I doubt it will help, use Apple's Disk Utility and run Repair
Disk Permissions. Worth a try.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/Mac/WordMacHome.html>
My Site: <http://www.bethrosengard.com>

 

[Mark Pedretti]

Hi Beth, Phillip, and John,

I just wanted to give an update on my progress with my "Recovered Files
Always in the Trash" problem. Basically, I've gone through all of the steps
suggested so far in this thread, to no avail. I:

-Uninstalled all versions of Office (on the second pass it worked properly,
deleting the applications as well as the prefs).
-Reinstalled Office from the CD using the installer.
-Performed the 11.3 update.
-Used Disk Utility to repair permissions. I had a glimmer of hope here,
because DU found a repair at the the level of /Library/.

But no dice. I just wrote a letter on Word, and after a restart the
"Recovered Files" are back in the trash.

So this leaves me/us with a couple of options:

-(1) figure out how to repair the permissions on an invisible folder
(Temporary Items). I made some initial forays into investigating this by
using an app that showed all invisible items, but I couldn't change the
permissions in the Get Info window for anything that looked like it might be
the responsible folder.
-(2) screwing around at the root user level. This might include seeing if I
can change the permissions at this level, or even performing an install of
Office from here. I must admit that this idea strikes fear into my heart,
if only because I'm new to this file system and worry that I might make
things even worse. But then again, most of my major breakthroughs on the
Mac have come from taking such risks.

Anyway, thanks for all of your help. I'm still totally open to new
suggestions while I keep waiting for that Unix Jedi to come along. So keep
the thread going if you have any new suggestions; god knows I'll be reading
it!

Best, Mark

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

So this leaves me/us with a couple of options:

-(1) figure out how to repair the permissions on an invisible folder
(Temporary Items). I made some initial forays into investigating this by
using an app that showed all invisible items, but I couldn't change the
permissions in the Get Info window for anything that looked like it might be
the responsible folder.

Run this script in Script Editor:


set tempFolderPath to path to temporary items as Unicode text
tell application "Finder"
set tempFolder to folder tempFolderPath
tell tempFolder to set {owner privileges, group privileges, everyones
privileges} to {read write, read only, read only}
set allTempFiles to entire contents of tempFolder
repeat with i from 1 to (count allTempFiles)
set tempFile to item i of my allTempFiles
tell tempFile
set {owner privileges, group privileges, everyones privileges}
to {read write, read only, read only}
end tell
end repeat
end tell

(If you get an error saying this is not allowed, it would mean that you are
not the owner of your own temp folder, which is pretty well impossible. But
if you do, report back.)

-(2) screwing around at the root user level. This might include seeing if I
can change the permissions at this level, or even performing an install of
Office from here. I must admit that this idea strikes fear into my heart,
if only because I'm new to this file system and worry that I might make
things even worse. But then again, most of my major breakthroughs on the
Mac have come from taking such risks.

Don't!

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

What the script did was to set the permissions correctly on your invisible
Temporary Items folder. And would have done the same for any files within
it, but there weren't any (which is fine).

So that proves that the people wondering if the "problem" (personally I
can't see any problem) was faulty permissions guessed wrong. That's all.

THERE'S NO PROBLEM. I see the same thing in my own Trash. Big deal. That's
where they should be, it seems. Word puts them there when quitting. They're
useless files you don't need, so the trash is the right place for them. Just
Empty the trash, like Philip said.

And STOP removing and reinstalling Office That's not going to do anything.

I wouldn't be totally surprised if the difference between seeing these files
and not seeing them had something to do with the difference between choosing
Yes (either explicitly or by the preference that does it for you
automatically) to "Do you want to save Normal?" and choosing No. Or not.

Just forget about it.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Simon Simpson]

Dear Mark,

I too get these "recovered" files in the trash. I believe this is
Word's attempt to be helpful. In a case of what it seems to perceive
as some untoward (and sometimes 'invisible') internal problem
having occurred it dumps the temporary files in the trash so you can,
if you need, retrieve your data. So almost certainly, 'normal'
behaviour !

Other applications also exhibit this behaviour. But I particularly
noticed an increase in this once I upgrade to Mac OSX 10.4.8. There
might be a connection - but who knows what goes on in the mysterious
mind of computers ? (rhetorical question).

It is, I believe, nothing to worry about; but if you've time
(perhaps a lot of time) you may be able to track down why Word,
repeatedly, believes it's got some kind of problem. Alternatively,
you may have to put it down to Bob Buckland's observation that
"Word rarely misses an opportunity to perplex." !

Best wishes,
Simon Simpson