versions command

[Kathleen Clark]

Hi all,

Hmmmm.. I tried to post this a few days ago, but it didn't show up. I
will try again. I seem to have a problem with the version command under
the file menu. I've been working on a document for about a year, and I
saved a version of the document, using the command file>versions, each
time I updated the document. Sometime recently, I noticed that all the
old versions are now just the last version I saved. I'm not sure when
this occured. Have I lost all the old versions, or is the "pointer"
just messed-up somehow? I'm not sure how to fix the problem, and/or if
someone else has experienced it.

Thanks!

Kathleen

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Kathleen,

Your first post *did* come through and was answered by John McGhie. Here's
what he said:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--
***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>