Word 07 trashes 30 page document

[Bob Day]

Upgraded from Office pro 03 to Office Ent 07 on stand alone xp laptop...

I am power user of Office 03 and word in particular, and I am in fear of
Word 07, it is a beta product at best.

Question 1) I spend a huge amount of time creating a custom style set (Home
tab, Change Style Set) to match our corporate standards. It is now gone; I
was under the impression that once creted, it could be applied to other
documents. I cannot find it anywere. Any ideas where it went?

Question 2) This is really the worst. A 40 page document looked fine
yesterday. Today I open it (docx, converted from 03 document, worked on
extensively in 07), and it is trashed. It has been truncated to 6 pages and
all of the styles (the customer style set mentioned above) are screwed up and
a different TOC has been inserted. The .wkb version of the document is
exactly the same (saved at the same time by the date/time stamp). Yes, I
have a back up, but this represents days worth of lost work. Any ideas what
happened?

I am furious that Micorsoft keeps putting out software that you cannot trust
and must do battle with. This obsurd. What happened to trushworthy
computing?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,bob

 

[Jeff Mathewson]

Welcome to Office 2007!!

First, you must make sure that you have all the latest patches installed.
As well, you may note that most everything you knew about Word is out the
window. For now, it would be best to go back to 2003 and wait for SP1 or
even 2. The problems you will run into will come again when ever a new
patch is released as we have found. A perfect document(s) were trashed when
a new patch was installed. This is most likely due to some OpenXML bugs MS
is working out...

As well, IT IS very important that you backup all your documents before
using them in Word. If you are on a network, for now, you are safe; but if
you are working on the files locally, Office will automatically delete all
your old files when it converts them to DocX or XLSx. Also make sure that
you save your work a lot. There's a small bug in the autosave/backup
restore. When Office 2007 applications crash and auto restart, as of this
point, the application will not check to see what file is newer..that being
the original or the backup. And in that, the apps will restore the backup
even if the saved version is newer.


Jeff.

 

[Aeneas]

Question 1: Where is the custom Quick Style set?
As you may or (obviously) may not remember, on Sept. 1, I told you the
following:

"When you've customized a Quick Style set, you need to save it with a unique
name *before* you apply a different Quick Style set or you'll lose all the
customizations.

To save a new custom Quick Style set, do the following:
On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Change Styles

Point to Style Set and click Save as Quick Style Set

In the Save Quick Style Set dialog box, in the File Name box, enter a name
and click OK

The name of this Quick Style set will now appear on the menu.

To back up custom Quick Style sets, you'll find each one in a .dotx file at
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\Microsoft\Quick
Styles\*.dotx (Windows XP) or C:\Users\User
Name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\QuickStyles\*.dotx (Vista)"

Question 2: How to recover damaged document?
Before you give up on finding the missing pieces of the document, you might
find the following extremely detailed Knowledge Base article (How to
troubleshoot damaged documents in Word 2007) useful – it has been rewritten
for each new version of Word:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918429/.

In addition take a look at Graham Mayor’s article
http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm and
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm (not updated for Word
2007).

General comments about your specific problem(s) and about Word 2007:
You should never -- no matter what application you're using -- expose
yourself to "days worth of lost work." As a power user, I'm sure you know
that already.

I strongly disagree with your comments that Word 2007 is a “beta product at
best†or that it is software that “you cannot trust.â€

a. It is probably the most extensively test piece of software ever released

b. Our office has converted and edited hundreds and hundreds of documents
using Word 2007. All .doc versions were backed up and saved as a simple
precaution. Users were trained in the use of the new UI. Some of the
converted documents have been continuously edited on multiple computers by
multiple authors going back to Word 97; many contain numerous style-based
numbered lists, bookmarks, hyperlinks and highly complex tables. We have made
extensive use of customized Quick Style sets and document themes. Other than
buggy behavior that Beth Melton has already noted here, we have experienced
only minor problems with Quick Style sets. All changed document files are
backed up daily. AutoRecover and backup options are enabled in Word Options.

We have not lost a single document, not a single section, not a single
paragraph, not a single Word, not a single character. In fact the zipped XML
format is extraordinarily robust and corrupt file recovery has proven to be
simple and transparent.

Why do we use Word 2007 for mission critical documents when we feel such
precautions are necessary?

It is prudent: This is particularly important in using an application prior
to the release of its first SP. There are always bugs regardless of how
extensive the beta testing was (3.5 million +downloaded).

The quality and appearance of the documents produced in Word 2007 is vastly
superior to earlier versions of Word; moreover, once users are adequately
trained, producing these documents is remarkably simple.

....and so on.

Good luck in recovering the document.

 

[KMA]

Sorry, but Word 07 is just not trustworthy. My experience is, you can't
predict when it'll crash and lose your document, only that it certainly will.
I'm going back to tried and true old stuff. It's a beta for sure. If it's so
extensively tested, why is it so unstable? Unless it was tested, found
flawed, and just released anyway.

 

[Graham Mayor]

While Word 2007 may be a culture shock after earlier versions, instability
is not one of its faults.
If you are experiencing instability then you need to establish what external
factor is the cause. The most likely explanations are the use of add-ins
intended for an earlier version which have not been upgraded to work with
2007 - or pilot error!.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP


<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>

 

[KMA]

Such condescending excuses for a poor product. Yes, like it or not, it's a
BETA at best, I fear for my work with W07. Open a .doc with W07 - wait -
CRASH! and down the tube goes anything else that was open. Happened again, no
add-ins. "culture shock" - hardly. It's not incompetence that makes Word 07
miserable, it's the way it works. It has serious issues such that some gov't
agencies stopped deploying it!

 

[Graham Mayor]

I don't work for Microsoft and don't feel obliged to defend any of their
products, but what you say is simply nonsense. If you are experiencing such
crashes then there will be a reason for it - the most likely ones being
those mentioned, but as a result of the crashes, you will now probably have
a raft of orphaned temporary files that will not be helping and there is
every possibility that your normal template is corrupt, so rename that too.
And if you are working with a 30 page document that you have never saved and
you believe the product to be unstable, then you are your own worst enemy.
You need to revise your working practices. You should save often. If you
lose more than a few paragraphs then that is down to pilot error.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP


<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>

 

[boB]

Question 1: Where is the custom Quick Style set?
As you may or (obviously) may not remember, on Sept. 1, I told you the
following:

"When you've customized a Quick Style set, you need to save it with a unique
name *before* you apply a different Quick Style set or you'll lose all the
customizations.

To save a new custom Quick Style set, do the following:
On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Change Styles

Point to Style Set and click Save as Quick Style Set

In the Save Quick Style Set dialog box, in the File Name box, enter a name
and click OK

The name of this Quick Style set will now appear on the menu.

I have a similar problem (I'm also boB, just not the first bob in this
thread), in that I did exactly what you say here (on my own, no accusations
here and then selected the newly created Quick Style from another
document, but the styles were not the same.

Case in point, my modified and saved "Heading 2" definition from the
original document:

Font: 14 pt, Bold, Indent: Left: 0", Hanging: 0.05", Space Before: 24 pt,
Level 2, Tab stops: 0", List tab, Outline numbered + Level: 2 + Numbering
Style: 1, 2, 3, … + Start at: 1 + Alignment: Left + Aligned at: 0" + Tab
after: 0" + Indent at: 0", Style: Quick Style, Based on: Standard, Following
style: Standard

vs the document with the selected Quick Style:

Font: 14 pt, Bold, Space Before: 24 pt, Widow/Orphan control, Level 2,
Style: Quick Style, Based on: Normal, Following style: Normal

My numbering options have been eliminated, the "based on" and "following"
styles have changed, ... And numbering, in particular, is a beast of a
pain to have to re-apply every time I load the new Quick Style.