Answered in another newsgroup. Please do not multipost.

roccov wrote:

Can anyone help with this strange phenomenon? I have a folder with
several Word documents (Microsoft Word 2002 SP2). Suddenly several new
documents which appear to be copies of some of the original ones have
appeared in the folder whilst the originals remain unchanged. There are
two new types of these copy files, for example one document I had named
04131[20040723] has appeared as ~WRL3945.tmp and is listed as file type
"TMP File". The file icon is greyed out but does open when
double-clicked and seems identical to the original.

An example of the other type is a copy of a file I named
03133[20031030] and has the file name ~$133[20031030] and is listed as
"Microsoft Word Document", like the original. The file icon is greyed
out but does open. However where the original is a four page letter,
the new file is a three page document with a couple of lines of squares
at the top of each page. All these files start ~$ and are 1 KB in size.

Can anyone explain what is going on and can I safely delete these rogue
copies?