save changes prompt appears for unchanged documents

[Guest]

Hi,

I am on Mac os x (latest version) and word. A few days ago
word started asking me if I wanted to save changes to
documents that I just opened and didn't make any changes
to. Very frustrating. Any ideas on how to make this stop?

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Even though *you* didn't make any changes to a document, that doesn't mean
no changes were made. Word regularly updates AutoText entries, in
particular your contacts from Entourage (if you use its Address Book to
store contact info). That's what usually explains this.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[henryn]

Beth:

Thanks for your response on this thread:

Even though *you* didn't make any changes to a document, that doesn't mean
no changes were made. Word regularly updates AutoText entries, in
particular your contacts from Entourage (if you use its Address Book to
store contact info). That's what usually explains this.

Your explanation seems consistent with my experience.

Opening and scrolling through a document for 10 - 30 seconds, then closing,
doesn't seem to generally generate a "save changes" prompt. Longer times
generally result in a "save changes" prompt. Maybe the update interval is
somewhere around 3 - 5 minutes.

I just got a bunch of Word documents dumped on me for analysis and found
myself tripping over the save prompt again and again as I made my first
quick pass through,

Did we recently talk privately about disabling the AutoText update from
Address Book? Did we discuss a prior version that had a preference to do
this -- but it was non-operational? I looked for a preference affecting
this update in Word 2004, but couldn't find it.

Besides the inconvenience, it's potentially quite disturbing to some users
to be told, in effect, "you made changes" to a document when they are sure
they have not. I find this especially disturbing when I depend on the
application to help me remember if I have actually made changes -- say,
working under deadline, with a lot of documents, and not enough sleep.

Yes, I understand this is the cost of supporting automatically updated
AutoText entries. But this feature is of no value to me, and so the cost is
too high. Perhaps the best solution would be the elusive "disable update
from Address Book" function.

Thanks,

Henry

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[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Henry,

Did we recently talk privately about disabling the AutoText update from
Address Book? Did we discuss a prior version that had a preference to do
this -- but it was non-operational? I looked for a preference affecting
this update in Word 2004, but couldn't find it.

There's no way to disable the AutoText update that I know of. There is,
however, a macro that allows you to clear the AutoText list.

Yes, I understand this is the cost of supporting automatically updated
AutoText entries. But this feature is of no value to me, and so the cost is
too high. Perhaps the best solution would be the elusive "disable update
from Address Book" function.

I assume you've made this request via the Feedback link on the Help menu?

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[henryn]

Hullo Beth:

Thanks for your response on this thread: in article
BCEE41B2.3EE0B%[email protected], Beth Rosengard at

Hi Henry,



There's no way to disable the AutoText update that I know of.

That would seem to be the case.

There is, however, a macro that allows you to clear the AutoText list.

No, no utility in doing that. AutoText _could_ _be_ convenient. No sense
in throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I assume you've made this request via the Feedback link on the Help menu?

Now that you've confirmed this issue, I have. Here it is:

(Word 2004)

If a user opens a document and makes no changes, then closes the document,
there a "Save" prompt ("Do you want to save the changes you made to
"<document>"?) should never occur. But quite often the prompt does occur.
This is very confusing -- Word should know that no changes have, in fact, been
made.

I'm told by MVPs that the reason the Save prompt often occurs is that Autotext
entries are updated periodically (every 5 minutes or so, I gather) from the
Address Book in the background, and --if an update occurs while a document is
open-- the document is marked "modified".

But "modified" in the user context is a modification by the user, so this
logic is incorrect.

Workaround? Apparently there was a method (a preference setting?) in prior
Word versions that disabled the AutoText update -- but the setting had no
effect. Anyway, there should be a way of disabling the update. While you're
at it, how about a preference item "AutoText update marks document

'modified'"?

I'll call your attention to the issue of "user context" versus "program
context". I think a number of Word issues arise from similar confusion
between what the user knows versus what the program knows. This is a
reasonable error to make in a complex program, but it shouldn't be too
difficult to fix.

In this case, the issue is clear-cut: Word is marking documents "modified"
despite the fact that the user knows --and may be depending on-- his/her
making no changes whatsoever to it. This _is_ a bug.

The addition of a functional "don't update from Address Book" and "...marks
document 'modified'" preferences are the most direct workarounds I can think
of, but it would be even better to solve the basic problem.

Thanks,

Henry

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