Why does my floppy disk drive start when I open Word?

[alanthegrey]

I copied some Word documents onto my hard drive using the floppy. The Floppy
drive now starts when I open Word. How can I stop this?

 

[Charles Kenyon]

If you want to be able to use your documents, when working with in Word, act
as if your floppy drive does not exist. (This applies to CDRW/CDR drives as
well.)
Don't use Word to:
Open a document on a floppy
Print a document on a floppy
Edit a document on a floppy
Save a document to a floppy (not even a copy)

Word regularly trashes documents on floppy drives!

Instead, work on the document using your hard drive. Copy it back and forth
using Windows.

I know that for some with shared computers (libraries) this is a tough
prescription. All I can recommend for that is to use a brand new formatted
disk each time you save and don't do any editing.

To answer your question, from within Word, open a document on your hard
drive.

 

[TF]

While the documents pointing to the floppy are still in the MRU cache, this
will continue. Empty the MRU cache.



:I copied some Word documents onto my hard drive using the floppy. The
Floppy
: drive now starts when I open Word. How can I stop this?

 

[Hi Ho Silver]

Surely this can't be true?

If you want to be able to use your documents, when working with in Word,
act as if your floppy drive does not exist. (This applies to CDRW/CDR
drives as well.)
Don't use Word to:
Open a document on a floppy
Print a document on a floppy
Edit a document on a floppy
Save a document to a floppy (not even a copy)

Word regularly trashes documents on floppy drives!

Instead, work on the document using your hard drive. Copy it back and
forth using Windows.

I know that for some with shared computers (libraries) this is a tough
prescription. All I can recommend for that is to use a brand new formatted
disk each time you save and don't do any editing.

To answer your question, from within Word, open a document on your hard
drive.

 

[Graham Mayor]

Why not? Floppy discs are an ancient technology. Word creates a host of
temporary files in the working folder. It is not possioble to pre-determine
the file size of the document nor the size of the temporaty files. If it
cannot create them through lack of space, then goodbye document, goodbye
disc. *Always* work from the hard drive and *copy* to removable media from
Windows.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Margaret Aldis]

But Word was busy trashing documents on floppy disks long before they became
"ancient technology" <g>. The blame surely lies with the way Word insists on
relating to the "current directory" - if it made temporary files in a
temporary directory, it wouldn't have the problem of continually writing
into the same space needed for saved files. Not knowing the size of the
document is a different non-issue (available space can be checked before a
real file save, and you can be given a warning to save elsewhere or at worst
lose editing since the last save - most applications don't find it necessary
to write garbage over your saved data.)

I believe, but can't confirm from my own experience, that if you do have to
use a floppy (as in a library situation) checking the Save option "Make
local copy of files stored on network or removable drives" may help with
this and with the similar problem of trashing files opened over a network if
the connection is lost or slow.