Word 2000 and 2003

I support an office of about 100 users, and we've had recurring problems
with users losing hours of work because they didn't bother to save their
document. It never fails that when this happens they say, "But it's set up
to auto save." I'm not an expert on the auto save feature of Word, but my
understanding is that it really doesn't work if the user has not saved the
document at least one time.

I have an idea on how to deal with the problem. This idea is not terribly
well though out yet, so there may be some shortcomings in the basic approach
that I am considering. My idea is to create an auto open macro that will
save new documents using a generic name like MyDoc1.doc, MyDoc2.doc,
MyDoc3.doc, etc. I'd save the generic name in a document variable. Another
macro would use that document variable to delete the MyDoc1.doc file once
the user saves the document under a new name.

I realize that this is an IT solution for what is primarily a user training
problem. Unfortunately, it seems that I have no choice as some of my users
have proven to be un-trainable. :-)

Any thoughts or suggestions regarding my idea? Any better solutions?

--Tom

See http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/AutomaticSave.htm ,
http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm , and
http://www.gmayor.com/save_numbered_versions.htm .

Thomas M wrote:

Word 2000 and 2003

I support an office of about 100 users, and we've had recurring problems
with users losing hours of work because they didn't bother to save their
document. It never fails that when this happens they say, "But it's set up
to auto save." I'm not an expert on the auto save feature of Word, but my
understanding is that it really doesn't work if the user has not saved the
document at least one time.

I have an idea on how to deal with the problem. This idea is not terribly
well though out yet, so there may be some shortcomings in the basic approach
that I am considering. My idea is to create an auto open macro that will
save new documents using a generic name like MyDoc1.doc, MyDoc2.doc,
MyDoc3.doc, etc. I'd save the generic name in a document variable. Another
macro would use that document variable to delete the MyDoc1.doc file once
the user saves the document under a new name.

I realize that this is an IT solution for what is primarily a user training
problem. Unfortunately, it seems that I have no choice as some of my users
have proven to be un-trainable. :-)

Any thoughts or suggestions regarding my idea? Any better solutions?

--Tom