The .WBK file is not the file created by the Autorecover utility. It is the
file that is created if the "Always create backup copy" box is checked under
ToolsOptionsSave.

The autorecover file will have a name the same as the file name except that
the first two characters of the filename will be replaced by ~$.

If Word really did crash (and it was not the operator) then Word does
usually (and in my experience, quite reliably) recomver such files.

If the ~$ file still exists, it can (sometimes) be opened to provide some
usable text by using the "Recover text from any file" option in the Files
of type pulldown in the FileOpen dialog.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Thomas M" wrote in message
...
Word 2000

Before I state my question, let me say that I did not personally witness
what the user did, or what happened in the aftermath. I got my report
second hand, so it's hard to say what truly transpired. That being said,
here is what I was told...

A few weeks ago one of the users that I support lost several hours of work
because Word crashed unexpectedly and he had not saved his document, and
then Word failed to recover his file when it restarted. The user has Word
set to save autorecovery information every 10 minutes. When Word did not
recover the file automatically after being restarted, the user attempted
to
find the .WBK file, but was not able to locate the file.

With regards to the .WBK file, I suspect that the user was looking in the
wrong location because the file location for autorecover files is
different
than the document and startup file locations, and the user is not
sophisticated enough with Word to know how to find the correct file
location. However, in theory the file location should not matter, and
Word
should have been able to recover the file. But alas, I know that theory
does not often match the real world. This might be something of a broad
question, but what are the possible causes of Word's failure to recover
the
file, and how might I go about making the autorecovery operation more
reliable?

--Tom