Temporary file overwrites original without choosing Save

[BarbaraSWD]

I have one network user with odd behavior in Word (Office Pro 2003). After
editing a saved document and then closing it WITHOUT SAVING, the edits are
still somehow overwriting the original text.

This will go on for a period of time - several days - and then it apparently
spontaneously stops and the program works normally again, only saving the
changes when told to save. Some of these documents no doubt should be set up
as templates to prevent overwriting but that's rather beside the point. An
open document should be able to be reverted to its last saved state!

Have checked for viruses and deleted the normal.dot template. No macros are
used. Have also tried turning off fast saves and background saves, no
difference. The problem seems to occur intermittently both with network
locations (Windows Server 2003 domain) and on the local drive (XP Pro SP2).

I'm at a loss to understand what is going on here. Any suggestions are
welcome!

 

[Charles Kenyon]

You should always have fast saves turned off. This is a legacy fuction
dating back to pre-windows days.

Turn on the Save option to always save a backup. That may help some times.

It is not beside the point that your users should be using templates to
create their documents. That is the point.

You are right that what you are experiencing is problematic. I recall at
least one virus causing this but it doesn't sound like that is your problem.
You could check Add-Ins. Poorly-written ones sometimes act like a virus.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide




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[BarbaraSWD]

Thanks for the response. Have done new virus/spyware scans with an alternate
vendor's software to double check - the automatic saving of edits over the
original is no detectable bug. There are no add-ins, and as I mentioned
previously, no specialized macros.

If there is no other solution, Word's "always create backup copy" is an
option, though a messy one. Previous versions of network files can be
retrieved using volume shadow copy, at least. That doesn't prevent user and
admin frustration at some unpredictable and apparently unsolveable quirk!

But I disagree on the blanket answer "use a template" to deal with Word
unexpectedly saving temporary file edits over the original document.

Many times I have worked on an ongoing, work-in-progress document and then
for one reason or another decided to discard my work and go back to the last
saved version. Maybe I didn't like what I wrote, maybe the new information
became obsolete in the interim, maybe I don't want to go back through a ton
of "undo" levels to get back to a certain point. In such a situation, a
template is irrelevant. And in such a situation, having those temporary edits
permanently overwriting the file would be problematic indeed!