M
Margreta
Shortly after starting a new position that involves producing technical
reports, I started to encounter problems with Word. The company is networked
with Windows XP and using Office 2000.
The first sign of trouble: without any special drop-ins or graphics, an
ordinary doc (company letter template) couldn't be re-opened, I would get
'file path not valid' errors. The cause wasn't identified, but the tech
support person located the "open and repair" command in the submenu, so I
could at least print finalised documents. After a couple of weeks the problem
seemed to go away.
Sometimes the monitor would show the changes, but when I printed it, only
some of the changes would be there.
Miscellaneous other odd things would happen, such as, few times I would open
a doc template and the primary level menus remained in English, but the
submenus would pop up in French (incroyable).
Worst problem (and this has been an incredibly awful irreparable) problem:
revisions to documents randomly disappear. Normally, between the first draft
and the final draft, a document will go through a number of revisions. I
would see text disappear just from having closed a document and reopening it.
Sometimes, figures or text changes made in the first revision would remain
through two other revisions, then be gone in the final draft.
I noticed that the temp files that should disappear when the document is
closed still hang around. They used to disappear when I closed Word, but for
the last few weeks, some of them don't disappear after days.
I have tried to explain to people that the temp file is the 'working copy'
of the doc, and it contains the changes I made. If it doesn't go away, it
means the system isn't working properly.
The tech department reinstalled Word, and then they reformatted my hard
drive. Yesterday the Office Manager emailed me the shell_templates for two
kinds of reports, since I was using old documents to pick up the formatting
to prepare new reports. All of the other company templates (correspondence,
faxes, memos, etc.) I was using were the ones included in any new user
profile that gets created.
I was instructed not to save Excel sheets as csv tables or convert old
formatted docs to rtf because this might be causing the problem. I've
generally found csv and rtf to be more stable than some heavily formatted
Excel sheets, and docs that started life as Wordperfect, then Word, through
various revisions (and booksmarked, etc.) It seemed that I had a better
chance of the document remaining stable when I used this step before
inserting them in the report template.
Now I have been given a different computer. If that doesn't fix the problem
I will probably get fired (or kill myself).
I'm concerned that if I reopen one of the corrupted documents, it will
reintroduce whatever the cause of all of these problems was. I'm hoping that
someone has some familiarity with this kind of problem and could let me know
what caused it and if/how it was fixed.
Many thanks,
Margreta.
(sorry for the length.)
reports, I started to encounter problems with Word. The company is networked
with Windows XP and using Office 2000.
The first sign of trouble: without any special drop-ins or graphics, an
ordinary doc (company letter template) couldn't be re-opened, I would get
'file path not valid' errors. The cause wasn't identified, but the tech
support person located the "open and repair" command in the submenu, so I
could at least print finalised documents. After a couple of weeks the problem
seemed to go away.
Sometimes the monitor would show the changes, but when I printed it, only
some of the changes would be there.
Miscellaneous other odd things would happen, such as, few times I would open
a doc template and the primary level menus remained in English, but the
submenus would pop up in French (incroyable).
Worst problem (and this has been an incredibly awful irreparable) problem:
revisions to documents randomly disappear. Normally, between the first draft
and the final draft, a document will go through a number of revisions. I
would see text disappear just from having closed a document and reopening it.
Sometimes, figures or text changes made in the first revision would remain
through two other revisions, then be gone in the final draft.
I noticed that the temp files that should disappear when the document is
closed still hang around. They used to disappear when I closed Word, but for
the last few weeks, some of them don't disappear after days.
I have tried to explain to people that the temp file is the 'working copy'
of the doc, and it contains the changes I made. If it doesn't go away, it
means the system isn't working properly.
The tech department reinstalled Word, and then they reformatted my hard
drive. Yesterday the Office Manager emailed me the shell_templates for two
kinds of reports, since I was using old documents to pick up the formatting
to prepare new reports. All of the other company templates (correspondence,
faxes, memos, etc.) I was using were the ones included in any new user
profile that gets created.
I was instructed not to save Excel sheets as csv tables or convert old
formatted docs to rtf because this might be causing the problem. I've
generally found csv and rtf to be more stable than some heavily formatted
Excel sheets, and docs that started life as Wordperfect, then Word, through
various revisions (and booksmarked, etc.) It seemed that I had a better
chance of the document remaining stable when I used this step before
inserting them in the report template.
Now I have been given a different computer. If that doesn't fix the problem
I will probably get fired (or kill myself).
I'm concerned that if I reopen one of the corrupted documents, it will
reintroduce whatever the cause of all of these problems was. I'm hoping that
someone has some familiarity with this kind of problem and could let me know
what caused it and if/how it was fixed.
Many thanks,
Margreta.
(sorry for the length.)