Word Not deleting temp files

[Lem]

A friend of mine with Office XP says that shortly after updating to SP2
of Win XP Pro, Word has been creating files with ~$ as the first two
characters. As far as I know, Word normally does this while a file is
open (e.g., if I'm working on test.doc, Word creates ~$test.doc) but
then deletes the temporary file when you close the real file. His
system isn't deleting the temp file. There are two other pecularities
that may be related. (1) his system drops the first letter of the
filename (so the temp file for test.doc is ~$est.doc) and (2) his tilde
seems to be at the top of the character space rather than at the middle.

Any suggestions?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The display of the tilde depends on the font, and in general the ~$ will
replace the first two letters of the filename if it is longer than six
characters. If these "owner" files are not being deleted, it may be a
problem with permissions or, if he is on a network, with possible server
attributes.

 

[Graham Mayor]

The files may also simply be orphans. Clearing them out may help Word
behave - http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Lem]

The display of the tilde depends on the font, and in general the ~$ will
replace the first two letters of the filename if it is longer than six
characters. If these "owner" files are not being deleted, it may be a
problem with permissions or, if he is on a network, with possible server
attributes.

Thanks for the explanation of how the ~$ character replacement works. I
had only tried it with a <6 char name. The "owner" files are created in
the same (local) directory where he's saving the "real" document, so
unless I'm missing something, I don't see how it could be a permissions
problem. I've given him Graham Mayor's advice to clean out the temp
files. I also found out that although he's good about using "Windows"
update, he hadn't been to "Office" update in a while (MS really ought to
combine the windows update and office update scans). Perhaps the
problem will go away after he's cleaned and updated.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

There's reason to hope, I think, that Office Update will be made automatic
in the next version of Office. Windows Update works so well that there's
considerable demand to offer the same functionality for Office Update.