Word files disappear in the Finder

[JR]

I'm having a problem with my users where miscellaneous Word files
"disappear" from the Finder. They will not show up in the listing in
Finder unless you reboot or Force Quit/Relaunch the Finder. They will
not show up in the Finder until you reboot, but if you go into Word and
do a File/Open, you will see them just fine. This is not for all
files, but just hit-or-miss on various Word 2004 documents. Has anyone
else had this?

We have the following:
Macintosh OS 10.3.6 & 10.3.7
MS Office 2004
Windows 2003 Servers
ExtremeZ-IP software on the servers

 

[CyberTaz]

Are the files stored locally or on a server?

If locally, when is the last time Disk Utility (or OnyX, Cocktail, etc.) was
run to Repair Disk Permissions?

What other symptoms/attempted fixes can you provide?

Regards |:>)

 

[mmmmark]

I'm having a problem with my users where miscellaneous Word files
"disappear" from the Finder. They will not show up in the listing in
Finder unless you reboot or Force Quit/Relaunch the Finder. They will
not show up in the Finder until you reboot, but if you go into Word and
do a File/Open, you will see them just fine. This is not for all
files, but just hit-or-miss on various Word 2004 documents. Has anyone
else had this?

We have the following:
Macintosh OS 10.3.6 & 10.3.7
MS Office 2004
Windows 2003 Servers
ExtremeZ-IP software on the servers

Do they "disappear" or are they not "appearing" after a save? I've had the
latter happen to me. I'll save a word doc to the desktop, for example.
I'll go to the desktop and nada. I'll scratch my head, retrace my steps,
making sure I saved it where I thought I did. By then, usually the file
will have "appeared" by then. Sometimes, I've noticed that I can get it to
appear faster by creating a new folder or renaming a file.

This behavior still happens occasionally for me in 10.3.9 with the newest
version of Office. It happens MUCH more frequently when saving to a windows
share. In fact, it happens regularly.

I'm pretty anal about computer maintenance, so cocktail is run regularly,
etc. Let me know if anyone else has run across this.

-Mark

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Do they "disappear" or are they not "appearing" after a save? I've had the
latter happen to me. I'll save a word doc to the desktop, for example.
I'll go to the desktop and nada. I'll scratch my head, retrace my steps,
making sure I saved it where I thought I did. By then, usually the file
will have "appeared" by then. Sometimes, I've noticed that I can get it to
appear faster by creating a new folder or renaming a file.

This behavior still happens occasionally for me in 10.3.9 with the newest
version of Office. It happens MUCH more frequently when saving to a windows
share. In fact, it happens regularly.

This is just the Finder being slow to update views. The Finder is not
actually in charge of the file system, just presenting it on screen. As you
say, switching to another folder and then coming back usually gets the
Finder to update.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[JosypenkoMJ]

This also happens in pre OS 10 OS's. If the file is in a folder,
closing the folder and reopening the folder will sometimes force a
refresh.
Related to this, sometimes a file copied with an FTP program will be
momentarilly typeless - a blank icon. Or changing the filetype of a
file with MPW will also result in blank icons for the file. Doing a get
info on the file will force the proper icon to be placed on the file.
In the MPW case, I think closing and reopening the file's folder also
updates the icon and filetype.l