You may have been bitten by Auto Update. If you have Automatic Updates set
to full-automatic, do not ever leave an unsaved document open on the Taskbar
when you leave the machine. If an update is downloaded and installed while
you are away, and Windows has to be restarted in order to complete the
installation, there will be prompts to save open files and close down apps,
but if you are not there to see them, eventually Auto Update will close
everything down without your permission.
Even if you have AU set to notify you when updates are available or ready to
install, it will update the updater itself without asking you and restart
your computer as needed. Many users consider this a bug; whether it's a bug
or not, it is certainly very high-handed. Microsoft's logic is that unless
the updater is updated, you won't be able to be notified of any further
updates. There is a certain logic to this, but most of us believe that it
should still ask permission if you have told it to.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
"lindalou" wrote in message
...
Yes, you don't totally lose the whole document. I never said you did. But
you
can lose some very important stuff. "It" in my sentence referred to the
antecedent "if you have just written something that took a lot of
thought."
And yes, it did shut down without asking if I wanted to save and without
presenting an autorecover option when I started up again.
"lindalou" wrote:
Word is VERY misleading about this. I just had Word close on me--not my
doing. There was no prompting to save any unsaved files. I have now lost
work
I have done. Even if you save work frequently (sometimes every 5 or 10
minutes), if you have just written something that took a lot of thought,
you
can totally lose it.
"If you . . . quit Word without saving, the autosave backup was deleted."
This is plain STUPID!! If you quit word without saving, that is when you
most
need the autosave backup--particularly because Word will just decide to
shut
down out of nowhere.
Why is it that Microsoft, this supposed amazing creator of software,
cannot,
after years and years of customer complaints (1) remedy situations that
people complain of over and over again, (2) write help files that are
actually helpful and are indexed properly, (3) be clear? Aren't
Microsoft
products supposed to be user-friendly? You might ask why I use them,
since I
have all these complaints. The answer is, because they are what most
people
use, and to not use them cuts you out of the loop.
I expect these people will never get it together and put out products
that
are truly user-friendly and intelligible.
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
But it was never intended as a substitute for ordinary saving. Here is
the
description of the feature from the Word 2.0 manual:
"If you have Automatic Save selected, Word saves your document for you
at
specific intervals. If there's a power outage or system failure, you
can
retrieve your work from the autosave backup files.
"The first time Word performs an autosave backup, it saves the entire
document. For subsequent backups, Word saves only those parts of the
document that have changed since the last save. The first autosave may
take
a moment, but later backups are fast and hardly noticeable as you work.
Automatic Save dot not take the place of the Save or Save All commands.
These commands completely save and update the versions of a document on
disk
each time you choose them.
"Word creates autosave backup files as necessary. Any time you choose
the
Save command, Word deletes the autosave backup file for the document
you're
saving. Word creates the files again at the next autosave interval for
documents active at that time. If you choose Save All *or quit Word*,
Word
deletes all of the autosave backup files." [Emphasis added.]
This is no different from AutoRecover. If you intentionally closed a
document or quit Word without saving, the autosave backup was deleted.
The
manual goes on to indicate that Word also saves you from losing your
work by
your computer's running out of memory and specifies that "in case of a
power
failure or other trouble with your computer, you can open an autosave
backup
file the next time you start Word." There is no indication that this
was
meant to be a substitute for manual saving or to protect users from
negligence.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.
"John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]" wrote
in
message ...
Hi Beth:
Yeah: Take it away! And bring back the old mechanism that used to
work.
If we must, rename the useless one to "Change logging." Because
that's
what
it does: it logs the changes to a file. But only if the file has
already
been saved :-)
Cheers
On 16/1/07 2:55 PM, in article ,
"Beth
Melton" wrote:
The option was called AutoSave at one point then it was changed to
"Save
AutoRecover information". Do you have a suggestion that could help
make
it
more clear?
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/
"roybaylis" wrote in message
...
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!
To think for years I have been relying on this - to no avail.
Ignorance is NOT (now) bliss!!!
Why don't Microsoft make this clearer?
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
There is no "autosave" in Word. See
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/general/AutomaticSave.htm
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup
so
all may benefit.
"roybaylis" wrote in
message
...
I have recently lost some Word docs, despite having autosave set
to 1
minute.
Journal was switched off, so no joy there.
Any ideas?!
Thanks a million.
Roy
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not
email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst,
Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410