word crash

S

Stephen

I have been using Word extensively for years (2000SR on
ME) and finally discovered today why it will occasionally
crash on me. It is when I happen to try to do a manual
Save at the exact same time that an autosave is occuring.
What happens is that I get an immediate error message
which closes Word, and I lose both the manual save and the
autorecovery save that was occuring, meaning I lose
everything from the last time I saved or it autosaved.
Fortunately, I have the autosave set for 10 minutes, so
that's all I ever lose. But sometimes I have written
important stuff in those ten minutes. Isn't there some way
to stop this crash and come up with a different way of
handling the conflict between the two save procedures? Has
this been fixed, and can you tell me how to get the fix?
 
B

Beth Melton

Hi Stephen,

This could be caused by temp files. I have found AutoRecovery saves
are especially vulnerable. So first try clearing your temp files and
if that doesn't rectify the problem then please provide the version of
Word you find under Help/About Microsoft Word.

- Exit Word and Outlook if you are using it as your email editor and
reboot your computer if you recently experienced a crash
- Go to Start/Find/Files or Folders (or Start/Search then select Files
or Folders)
- Change "Look in" to reflect the drive/folder to the root of your
Local drive.
- In the Named text box, type *.tmp
- Click the "Find Now" command
- Delete the temp files you find.

*Note that these can be deleted directly from the Find Results.

To group the files for a single deletion:
- Click any file in the list
- Press <Ctrl A> to select all

Should you encounter a "File in use" error, press <Ctrl> and click the
file to deselect it.

As an additional note, the Owner file is another temporary files Word
creates. If you have been experiencing multiple crashes or if Word has
been hanging on you then it is best to search for Owner files
(~$*.do?) and delete those as well. These can cause "file in use" and
"read only" errors.

For more information on this and a full cleanup/maintenance procedure
that should be run periodically, see this article:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/LockedFiles.htm

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
 
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