versions are all the same

[kathleen.clark]

Hi,

I was using the Versions command with Word 2004 to create an archive of
past versions of a manuscript for the last year. At some point
recently, all of the saved versions are now the same - they are all the
latest version of the manuscript. Is there someway to fix this (is the
program "pointing" to the wrong space), or are these versions just
lost? Is there any way to fix this probelm for future use?

Thanks!

 

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

Hi Kathleen:

The versions are permanently lost.

You are correct, the pointer in the document is indeed pointing to the wrong
version.

The way to prevent this happening is to NEVER USE VERSIONS

"Versions" was a fearsomely unstable mechanism introduced many years ago by
someone who wanted to prove how clever they were with the new Word document
format (this was Word 97 we're talking about).

It has been causing trouble and misery ever since. Essentially, the Word
..doc format is just not reliable enough to do the job. And as you have
discovered, when you get a document corruption, you lose ALL the versions
because you have all your eggs in one basket.

In fact, you have been lucky: you usually lose the entire document!

So now you know: keep your versions as separate, appropriately named files


The new XML format coming with Word 2007 and later will be much more stable.
But it will still be a seriously high risk from a data protection point of
view to keep all your previous versions in a single file

cheers

Hi,

I was using the Versions command with Word 2004 to create an archive of
past versions of a manuscript for the last year. At some point
recently, all of the saved versions are now the same - they are all the
latest version of the manuscript. Is there someway to fix this (is the
program "pointing" to the wrong space), or are these versions just
lost? Is there any way to fix this probelm for future use?

Thanks!

--

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. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410