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"Lost" Word docs
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 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 |
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