Word 2003 is saving my document as a WR?*.tmp file in the Windows\Temp
directory. The step that is supposed to rename the tmp back to my file name
does not take place. NOTE: the file is saved in the Windows\Temp directory,
not the directory in which I created and saved the document. In addition, no
copy or version of the current changes is named by the name I assign the
document when I use CTL-S to save it. I have to use Save As each time, and
navigate from Windows/temp to the directory where I want to save. I have
AutoSave set to 3 minutes (did me no good at all, since the recovery doc was
not at the specified location), have always save backup checked (also no good
since the backup was as bad as the original), and fast saves not checked. The
only way I avoided losing hours of work was by vaguely recalling that there
might be a tmp file somewhere I don't expect, and so was able to recover that
way without much loss.

(Details below. The material above reflects my reading of this thread. Below
does not.)

I don't want this. Yesterday, I did not realize this was happening, and
essentially lost several hours of work before realizing that Word had saved
the file (with the tmp name in Temp directory) without saving my changes to
my file. So when I opened my file to work after lunch all of the changes from
the past several hours were missing - they were in the tmp file! Pretty much
of a shock.

I have rechecked how I have tools\options\save settings, and they make sense
to me. So this is an exotic problem of some sort. The help routines and KB
have so far not given me any useful information about how to solve it.

I have started saving Versions, but pretty soon the Bloat will overcome my
system and I will have to delete them. Markup settings also seem to have no
effect.

Thanks for any help that can be offered here.

"MW" wrote:

MY FILES IN WORD ARE NAMED LIKE THIS ~WRL1233.tmp?
WHY?

Hi John,

According to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211632, a ~WRLxxxx.tmp file
is a clipboard temp file. If you found most or all of your document there,
it's probably because you copied it to the clipboard, not because Word
"saved" the document there.

Are you by any chance working on a document that you opened directly from an
email attachment? If so, almost all the files you affected were in a
temporary directory, and were probably discarded as soon as you closed Word.
However, using Save As does make a permanent copy of the attachment
document.

Look in Tools Options File Locations. What's the folder named as the
Documents location? That's the default location for the File Open and File
Save As dialogs.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

John Campbell wrote:
Word 2003 is saving my document as a WR?*.tmp file in the Windows\Temp
directory. The step that is supposed to rename the tmp back to my
file name does not take place. NOTE: the file is saved in the
Windows\Temp directory, not the directory in which I created and
saved the document. In addition, no copy or version of the current
changes is named by the name I assign the document when I use CTL-S
to save it. I have to use Save As each time, and navigate from
Windows/temp to the directory where I want to save. I have AutoSave
set to 3 minutes (did me no good at all, since the recovery doc was
not at the specified location), have always save backup checked (also
no good since the backup was as bad as the original), and fast saves
not checked. The only way I avoided losing hours of work was by
vaguely recalling that there might be a tmp file somewhere I don't
expect, and so was able to recover that way without much loss.

(Details below. The material above reflects my reading of this
thread. Below does not.)

I don't want this. Yesterday, I did not realize this was happening,
and essentially lost several hours of work before realizing that Word
had saved the file (with the tmp name in Temp directory) without
saving my changes to my file. So when I opened my file to work after
lunch all of the changes from the past several hours were missing -
they were in the tmp file! Pretty much of a shock.

I have rechecked how I have tools\options\save settings, and they
make sense to me. So this is an exotic problem of some sort. The help
routines and KB have so far not given me any useful information about
how to solve it.

I have started saving Versions, but pretty soon the Bloat will
overcome my system and I will have to delete them. Markup settings
also seem to have no effect.

Thanks for any help that can be offered here.

"MW" wrote:

MY FILES IN WORD ARE NAMED LIKE THIS ~WRL1233.tmp?
WHY?

No - this is a file that I created yesterday. No email, and no clipboard. I
checked File locations right away - the autosave is on a network drive, and
all the rest are just where I want them, default to the parent directory of
where I am working and saving. No fast saves, backup always, 3-minute
autosave. When I click CTRL-S or select File/save the name of the document
changes in the document header to wrl*.tmp. The problem I had yesterday was
that it never saved on my original (as created by SaveAs) file name. So when
I closed it, it saved as the tmp file. When I returned from lunch and opened
the file I thought I had saved I was in for a major shock - none of the work
was there. So I looked in autosave, and there was no copy there either. So I
opened the backup, and no different. It was only after an hour of trying to
reconstruct it that I decided to go look in TEMP, and there found a file that
looked like it was the right size. (A lot of false starts here - opened much
junk with WordPad and/or Notepad before hitting the right one.) Oddly enough,
the date and time of the document (tmp copy of the original, that is) was
early morning, not just before lunch. So evidently Word had been saving this
without a new time stamp over the course of the morning. This behavior is new
to me, and I have never seen any documentation of anything like it except for
the prior notes in this thread.

I am unsure of the conventions for cross-posting here. Would it have made
better sense for me to start a new thread, or looked for a more relevant one?
Should I have posted to other threads that seemed relevant to me, or is one
enough? Also, I don't see any way to sort by date here - if I search on "tmp
save" in the word section then I get relevant posts, but I don't see a way to
sort by date descending. Is there any sort option?

Thanks again for your help.

"Jay Freedman" wrote:

Hi John,

According to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211632, a ~WRLxxxx.tmp file
is a clipboard temp file. If you found most or all of your document there,
it's probably because you copied it to the clipboard, not because Word
"saved" the document there.

Are you by any chance working on a document that you opened directly from an
email attachment? If so, almost all the files you affected were in a
temporary directory, and were probably discarded as soon as you closed Word.
However, using Save As does make a permanent copy of the attachment
document.

Look in Tools Options File Locations. What's the folder named as the
Documents location? That's the default location for the File Open and File
Save As dialogs.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

John Campbell wrote:
Word 2003 is saving my document as a WR?*.tmp file in the Windows\Temp
directory. The step that is supposed to rename the tmp back to my
file name does not take place. NOTE: the file is saved in the
Windows\Temp directory, not the directory in which I created and
saved the document. In addition, no copy or version of the current
changes is named by the name I assign the document when I use CTL-S
to save it. I have to use Save As each time, and navigate from
Windows/temp to the directory where I want to save. I have AutoSave
set to 3 minutes (did me no good at all, since the recovery doc was
not at the specified location), have always save backup checked (also
no good since the backup was as bad as the original), and fast saves
not checked. The only way I avoided losing hours of work was by
vaguely recalling that there might be a tmp file somewhere I don't
expect, and so was able to recover that way without much loss.

(Details below. The material above reflects my reading of this
thread. Below does not.)

I don't want this. Yesterday, I did not realize this was happening,
and essentially lost several hours of work before realizing that Word
had saved the file (with the tmp name in Temp directory) without
saving my changes to my file. So when I opened my file to work after
lunch all of the changes from the past several hours were missing -
they were in the tmp file! Pretty much of a shock.

I have rechecked how I have tools\options\save settings, and they
make sense to me. So this is an exotic problem of some sort. The help
routines and KB have so far not given me any useful information about
how to solve it.

I have started saving Versions, but pretty soon the Bloat will
overcome my system and I will have to delete them. Markup settings
also seem to have no effect.

Thanks for any help that can be offered here.

"MW" wrote:

MY FILES IN WORD ARE NAMED LIKE THIS ~WRL1233.tmp?
WHY?

Jay

Re my prior reply, I did not use the clipboard via CTRL-C etc., but Word may
have concluded that my "save as" was the equivalent since I did not in fact
create a new document from scratch but rather used an old document as a
template for the new one. (Opened the old, used SaveAs to create the new one
with a new name, then edited from there to develop my new document.) I don't
think I used the alternate procedure, FileNew then SaveAs then CTRL-C CTRL-V
to copy and paste from the old document that I was using to guide my content.
My instincts are to use the FileOpen then FileSaveAs procedure instead. So
maybe Word interprets that as a copy/paste operation? Can't see how or why,
but it would not be completely weird.

Just for clarification ....

"Jay Freedman" wrote:

Hi John,

According to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211632, a ~WRLxxxx.tmp file
is a clipboard temp file. If you found most or all of your document there,
it's probably because you copied it to the clipboard, not because Word
"saved" the document there.

Are you by any chance working on a document that you opened directly from an
email attachment? If so, almost all the files you affected were in a
temporary directory, and were probably discarded as soon as you closed Word.
However, using Save As does make a permanent copy of the attachment
document.

Look in Tools Options File Locations. What's the folder named as the
Documents location? That's the default location for the File Open and File
Save As dialogs.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

John Campbell wrote:
Word 2003 is saving my document as a WR?*.tmp file in the Windows\Temp
directory. The step that is supposed to rename the tmp back to my
file name does not take place. NOTE: the file is saved in the
Windows\Temp directory, not the directory in which I created and
saved the document. In addition, no copy or version of the current
changes is named by the name I assign the document when I use CTL-S
to save it. I have to use Save As each time, and navigate from
Windows/temp to the directory where I want to save. I have AutoSave
set to 3 minutes (did me no good at all, since the recovery doc was
not at the specified location), have always save backup checked (also
no good since the backup was as bad as the original), and fast saves
not checked. The only way I avoided losing hours of work was by
vaguely recalling that there might be a tmp file somewhere I don't
expect, and so was able to recover that way without much loss.

(Details below. The material above reflects my reading of this
thread. Below does not.)

I don't want this. Yesterday, I did not realize this was happening,
and essentially lost several hours of work before realizing that Word
had saved the file (with the tmp name in Temp directory) without
saving my changes to my file. So when I opened my file to work after
lunch all of the changes from the past several hours were missing -
they were in the tmp file! Pretty much of a shock.

I have rechecked how I have tools\options\save settings, and they
make sense to me. So this is an exotic problem of some sort. The help
routines and KB have so far not given me any useful information about
how to solve it.

I have started saving Versions, but pretty soon the Bloat will
overcome my system and I will have to delete them. Markup settings
also seem to have no effect.

Thanks for any help that can be offered here.

"MW" wrote:

MY FILES IN WORD ARE NAMED LIKE THIS ~WRL1233.tmp?
WHY?

Hi John,

That behavior is so far away from normal Word behavior, and so unlike
anything I've ever heard of, that I wonder whether you've been infected with
some sort of virus or other nasty. Don't believe for a minute that this is
something that Word "just does" -- there's something seriously wrong in your
installation.

As a simple test, start Word in Safe Mode by holding down the Ctrl key why
you double-click the icon. Now open the same document, make a small change,
and save it. Exit Word and look at the timestamp of the document file -- has
it updated? Open again in Safe Mode and verify that the change is still in
the document.

If that works, start slogging through the procedures in
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/...peningWord.htm. While they're
aimed mostly at application crashes and error messages, they'll also
pinpoint any macro or add-in that's messing with your Save command.
Eventually you should find something for which removal stops the problem,
and replacement makes it start again. That will be your culprit.

This newsgroup is fine for this topic, and the application.errors group
would have been appropriate as well. The regular readers mostly inhabit both
groups. We do ask that you post only in one place if possible, and keep all
related posts in the same thread. The article at
http://word.mvps.org/FindHelp/WhichNewgrp.htm will give some advice.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

John Campbell wrote:
No - this is a file that I created yesterday. No email, and no
clipboard. I checked File locations right away - the autosave is on a
network drive, and all the rest are just where I want them, default
to the parent directory of where I am working and saving. No fast
saves, backup always, 3-minute autosave. When I click CTRL-S or
select File/save the name of the document changes in the document
header to wrl*.tmp. The problem I had yesterday was that it never
saved on my original (as created by SaveAs) file name. So when I
closed it, it saved as the tmp file. When I returned from lunch and
opened the file I thought I had saved I was in for a major shock -
none of the work was there. So I looked in autosave, and there was no
copy there either. So I opened the backup, and no different. It was
only after an hour of trying to reconstruct it that I decided to go
look in TEMP, and there found a file that looked like it was the
right size. (A lot of false starts here - opened much junk with
WordPad and/or Notepad before hitting the right one.) Oddly enough,
the date and time of the document (tmp copy of the original, that is)
was early morning, not just before lunch. So evidently Word had been
saving this without a new time stamp over the course of the morning.
This behavior is new to me, and I have never seen any documentation
of anything like it except for the prior notes in this thread.

I am unsure of the conventions for cross-posting here. Would it have
made better sense for me to start a new thread, or looked for a more
relevant one? Should I have posted to other threads that seemed
relevant to me, or is one enough? Also, I don't see any way to sort
by date here - if I search on "tmp save" in the word section then I
get relevant posts, but I don't see a way to sort by date descending.
Is there any sort option?

Thanks again for your help.

"Jay Freedman" wrote:

Hi John,

According to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211632, a
~WRLxxxx.tmp file is a clipboard temp file. If you found most or all
of your document there, it's probably because you copied it to the
clipboard, not because Word "saved" the document there.

Are you by any chance working on a document that you opened directly
from an email attachment? If so, almost all the files you affected
were in a temporary directory, and were probably discarded as soon
as you closed Word. However, using Save As does make a permanent
copy of the attachment document.

Look in Tools Options File Locations. What's the folder named as
the Documents location? That's the default location for the File
Open and File
Save As dialogs.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

John Campbell wrote:
Word 2003 is saving my document as a WR?*.tmp file in the
Windows\Temp directory. The step that is supposed to rename the tmp
back to my file name does not take place. NOTE: the file is saved
in the Windows\Temp directory, not the directory in which I created
and saved the document. In addition, no copy or version of the
current changes is named by the name I assign the document when I
use CTL-S to save it. I have to use Save As each time, and navigate
from Windows/temp to the directory where I want to save. I have
AutoSave set to 3 minutes (did me no good at all, since the
recovery doc was not at the specified location), have always save
backup checked (also no good since the backup was as bad as the
original), and fast saves not checked. The only way I avoided
losing hours of work was by vaguely recalling that there might be a
tmp file somewhere I don't expect, and so was able to recover that
way without much loss.

(Details below. The material above reflects my reading of this
thread. Below does not.)

I don't want this. Yesterday, I did not realize this was happening,
and essentially lost several hours of work before realizing that
Word had saved the file (with the tmp name in Temp directory)
without saving my changes to my file. So when I opened my file to
work after lunch all of the changes from the past several hours
were missing - they were in the tmp file! Pretty much of a shock.

I have rechecked how I have tools\options\save settings, and they
make sense to me. So this is an exotic problem of some sort. The
help routines and KB have so far not given me any useful
information about how to solve it.

I have started saving Versions, but pretty soon the Bloat will
overcome my system and I will have to delete them. Markup settings
also seem to have no effect.

Thanks for any help that can be offered here.

"MW" wrote:

MY FILES IN WORD ARE NAMED LIKE THIS ~WRL1233.tmp?
WHY?

Since you mention a network drive, I'm wondering if the document is being
saved locally or on the network drive and, if the latter, whether you have
enabled "Make local copy of files stored on network or removable drives"
(Tools | Options | Save). I'm not sure whether that could possibly be
relevant, but it's one more thing that might provide a clue. As Jay says,
though, it sounds more like a glitch at best or a virus at worst.

--
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 Campbell" wrote in message
...
No - this is a file that I created yesterday. No email, and no clipboard.
I
checked File locations right away - the autosave is on a network drive,
and
all the rest are just where I want them, default to the parent directory
of
where I am working and saving. No fast saves, backup always, 3-minute
autosave. When I click CTRL-S or select File/save the name of the document
changes in the document header to wrl*.tmp. The problem I had yesterday
was
that it never saved on my original (as created by SaveAs) file name. So
when
I closed it, it saved as the tmp file. When I returned from lunch and
opened
the file I thought I had saved I was in for a major shock - none of the
work
was there. So I looked in autosave, and there was no copy there either. So
I
opened the backup, and no different. It was only after an hour of trying
to
reconstruct it that I decided to go look in TEMP, and there found a file
that
looked like it was the right size. (A lot of false starts here - opened
much
junk with WordPad and/or Notepad before hitting the right one.) Oddly
enough,
the date and time of the document (tmp copy of the original, that is) was
early morning, not just before lunch. So evidently Word had been saving
this
without a new time stamp over the course of the morning. This behavior is
new
to me, and I have never seen any documentation of anything like it except
for
the prior notes in this thread.

I am unsure of the conventions for cross-posting here. Would it have made
better sense for me to start a new thread, or looked for a more relevant
one?
Should I have posted to other threads that seemed relevant to me, or is
one
enough? Also, I don't see any way to sort by date here - if I search on
"tmp
save" in the word section then I get relevant posts, but I don't see a way
to
sort by date descending. Is there any sort option?

Thanks again for your help.

"Jay Freedman" wrote:

Hi John,

According to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211632, a ~WRLxxxx.tmp
file
is a clipboard temp file. If you found most or all of your document
there,
it's probably because you copied it to the clipboard, not because Word
"saved" the document there.

Are you by any chance working on a document that you opened directly
from an
email attachment? If so, almost all the files you affected were in a
temporary directory, and were probably discarded as soon as you closed
Word.
However, using Save As does make a permanent copy of the attachment
document.

Look in Tools Options File Locations. What's the folder named as the
Documents location? That's the default location for the File Open and
File
Save As dialogs.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

John Campbell wrote:
Word 2003 is saving my document as a WR?*.tmp file in the Windows\Temp
directory. The step that is supposed to rename the tmp back to my
file name does not take place. NOTE: the file is saved in the
Windows\Temp directory, not the directory in which I created and
saved the document. In addition, no copy or version of the current
changes is named by the name I assign the document when I use CTL-S
to save it. I have to use Save As each time, and navigate from
Windows/temp to the directory where I want to save. I have AutoSave
set to 3 minutes (did me no good at all, since the recovery doc was
not at the specified location), have always save backup checked (also
no good since the backup was as bad as the original), and fast saves
not checked. The only way I avoided losing hours of work was by
vaguely recalling that there might be a tmp file somewhere I don't
expect, and so was able to recover that way without much loss.

(Details below. The material above reflects my reading of this
thread. Below does not.)

I don't want this. Yesterday, I did not realize this was happening,
and essentially lost several hours of work before realizing that Word
had saved the file (with the tmp name in Temp directory) without
saving my changes to my file. So when I opened my file to work after
lunch all of the changes from the past several hours were missing -
they were in the tmp file! Pretty much of a shock.

I have rechecked how I have tools\options\save settings, and they
make sense to me. So this is an exotic problem of some sort. The help
routines and KB have so far not given me any useful information about
how to solve it.

I have started saving Versions, but pretty soon the Bloat will
overcome my system and I will have to delete them. Markup settings
also seem to have no effect.

Thanks for any help that can be offered here.

"MW" wrote:

MY FILES IN WORD ARE NAMED LIKE THIS ~WRL1233.tmp?
WHY?

I use ToolsOptions Save tab to set the drive and directory locations just as
I have been for long period of Word use. I set the AutoSave directory to my
Home$ network location based on the theory that if I need it the likelihood
is that my local drive has a problem, so it is safer to have the autosave
somewhere else. But I save everything else to the local drive, and not to a
network or removable drive. I double checked all that when I saw the problem.

Jeff's idea is that there may be a non-Word pathology, but I doubt it. The
system is on a very tight governmental corporate network, with Altiris and
NAV among the protective resources. So I will look for installed plug ins or
helpers tomorrow and see what I can find, but he might be right that a
re-install is needed. I have not asked our in-house staff to look into this
yet becasue their instincts are generally just to re-image the system, which
of course does not help much. So I will spend a little more time trying to
figure it out.

Now that I know the behavior it no longer has the potential to cripple my
ability to work - all I have to do is avoid CTRL-S and use FileSaveAs
instead. That is irritating, but it certainly is not as horrific as
yesterday, when I thought that the whole thing was gone.

Thanks again Jeff and Suzanne for your help.

Was this site down for a while today? I could not get back in for a period
during the middle of the day PST and wonder if it was a glitch on our side or
the MS stie. Let me know if you know.


"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

Since you mention a network drive, I'm wondering if the document is being
saved locally or on the network drive and, if the latter, whether you have
enabled "Make local copy of files stored on network or removable drives"
(Tools | Options | Save). I'm not sure whether that could possibly be
relevant, but it's one more thing that might provide a clue. As Jay says,
though, it sounds more like a glitch at best or a virus at worst.

--
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 Campbell" wrote in message
...
No - this is a file that I created yesterday. No email, and no clipboard.
I
checked File locations right away - the autosave is on a network drive,
and
all the rest are just where I want them, default to the parent directory
of
where I am working and saving. No fast saves, backup always, 3-minute
autosave. When I click CTRL-S or select File/save the name of the document
changes in the document header to wrl*.tmp. The problem I had yesterday
was
that it never saved on my original (as created by SaveAs) file name. So
when
I closed it, it saved as the tmp file. When I returned from lunch and
opened
the file I thought I had saved I was in for a major shock - none of the
work
was there. So I looked in autosave, and there was no copy there either. So
I
opened the backup, and no different. It was only after an hour of trying
to
reconstruct it that I decided to go look in TEMP, and there found a file
that
looked like it was the right size. (A lot of false starts here - opened
much
junk with WordPad and/or Notepad before hitting the right one.) Oddly
enough,
the date and time of the document (tmp copy of the original, that is) was
early morning, not just before lunch. So evidently Word had been saving
this
without a new time stamp over the course of the morning. This behavior is
new
to me, and I have never seen any documentation of anything like it except
for
the prior notes in this thread.

I am unsure of the conventions for cross-posting here. Would it have made
better sense for me to start a new thread, or looked for a more relevant
one?
Should I have posted to other threads that seemed relevant to me, or is
one
enough? Also, I don't see any way to sort by date here - if I search on
"tmp
save" in the word section then I get relevant posts, but I don't see a way
to
sort by date descending. Is there any sort option?

Thanks again for your help.

"Jay Freedman" wrote:

Hi John,

According to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211632, a ~WRLxxxx.tmp
file
is a clipboard temp file. If you found most or all of your document
there,
it's probably because you copied it to the clipboard, not because Word
"saved" the document there.

Are you by any chance working on a document that you opened directly
from an
email attachment? If so, almost all the files you affected were in a
temporary directory, and were probably discarded as soon as you closed
Word.
However, using Save As does make a permanent copy of the attachment
document.

Look in Tools Options File Locations. What's the folder named as the
Documents location? That's the default location for the File Open and
File
Save As dialogs.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

John Campbell wrote:
Word 2003 is saving my document as a WR?*.tmp file in the Windows\Temp
directory. The step that is supposed to rename the tmp back to my
file name does not take place. NOTE: the file is saved in the
Windows\Temp directory, not the directory in which I created and
saved the document. In addition, no copy or version of the current
changes is named by the name I assign the document when I use CTL-S
to save it. I have to use Save As each time, and navigate from
Windows/temp to the directory where I want to save. I have AutoSave
set to 3 minutes (did me no good at all, since the recovery doc was
not at the specified location), have always save backup checked (also
no good since the backup was as bad as the original), and fast saves
not checked. The only way I avoided losing hours of work was by
vaguely recalling that there might be a tmp file somewhere I don't
expect, and so was able to recover that way without much loss.

(Details below. The material above reflects my reading of this
thread. Below does not.)

I don't want this. Yesterday, I did not realize this was happening,
and essentially lost several hours of work before realizing that Word
had saved the file (with the tmp name in Temp directory) without
saving my changes to my file. So when I opened my file to work after
lunch all of the changes from the past several hours were missing -
they were in the tmp file! Pretty much of a shock.

I have rechecked how I have tools\options\save settings, and they
make sense to me. So this is an exotic problem of some sort. The help
routines and KB have so far not given me any useful information about
how to solve it.

I have started saving Versions, but pretty soon the Bloat will
overcome my system and I will have to delete them. Markup settings
also seem to have no effect.

Thanks for any help that can be offered here.

"MW" wrote:

MY FILES IN WORD ARE NAMED LIKE THIS ~WRL1233.tmp?
WHY?

In my current case, the only document that is saved is the temporary. The
document with the file name I assigned is not there, and the temp is in the
Windows Temp directory, not the default document directory. In addition, the
banner name of the file changes when CTRL-S is used to save, namely to the
WRL temp file name. No abnormal termination is involved.

"Jezebel" wrote:

When you work on a document, Word actually works on a temporary copy of the
file, with a name like ~wrl...... These files are deleted when you close the
document, but get left behind if Word shuts down abnormally.



"MW" wrote in message
...
MY FILES IN WORD ARE NAMED LIKE THIS ~WRL1233.tmp?
WHY?

I will try safe mode tomorrow and report back. i just noticed that there is a
similar post by Rdoughton reply by Cindy M 1/21/2005 and 1/262005 this forum.
Sounds pretty much like the same problem as mine, or very similar.

"Jay Freedman" wrote:

Hi John,

That behavior is so far away from normal Word behavior, and so unlike
anything I've ever heard of, that I wonder whether you've been infected with
some sort of virus or other nasty. Don't believe for a minute that this is
something that Word "just does" -- there's something seriously wrong in your
installation.

As a simple test, start Word in Safe Mode by holding down the Ctrl key why
you double-click the icon. Now open the same document, make a small change,
and save it. Exit Word and look at the timestamp of the document file -- has
it updated? Open again in Safe Mode and verify that the change is still in
the document.

If that works, start slogging through the procedures in
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/...peningWord.htm. While they're
aimed mostly at application crashes and error messages, they'll also
pinpoint any macro or add-in that's messing with your Save command.
Eventually you should find something for which removal stops the problem,
and replacement makes it start again. That will be your culprit.

This newsgroup is fine for this topic, and the application.errors group
would have been appropriate as well. The regular readers mostly inhabit both
groups. We do ask that you post only in one place if possible, and keep all
related posts in the same thread. The article at
http://word.mvps.org/FindHelp/WhichNewgrp.htm will give some advice.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

John Campbell wrote:
No - this is a file that I created yesterday. No email, and no
clipboard. I checked File locations right away - the autosave is on a
network drive, and all the rest are just where I want them, default
to the parent directory of where I am working and saving. No fast
saves, backup always, 3-minute autosave. When I click CTRL-S or
select File/save the name of the document changes in the document
header to wrl*.tmp. The problem I had yesterday was that it never
saved on my original (as created by SaveAs) file name. So when I
closed it, it saved as the tmp file. When I returned from lunch and
opened the file I thought I had saved I was in for a major shock -
none of the work was there. So I looked in autosave, and there was no
copy there either. So I opened the backup, and no different. It was
only after an hour of trying to reconstruct it that I decided to go
look in TEMP, and there found a file that looked like it was the
right size. (A lot of false starts here - opened much junk with
WordPad and/or Notepad before hitting the right one.) Oddly enough,
the date and time of the document (tmp copy of the original, that is)
was early morning, not just before lunch. So evidently Word had been
saving this without a new time stamp over the course of the morning.
This behavior is new to me, and I have never seen any documentation
of anything like it except for the prior notes in this thread.

I am unsure of the conventions for cross-posting here. Would it have
made better sense for me to start a new thread, or looked for a more
relevant one? Should I have posted to other threads that seemed
relevant to me, or is one enough? Also, I don't see any way to sort
by date here - if I search on "tmp save" in the word section then I
get relevant posts, but I don't see a way to sort by date descending.
Is there any sort option?

Thanks again for your help.

"Jay Freedman" wrote:

Hi John,

According to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211632, a
~WRLxxxx.tmp file is a clipboard temp file. If you found most or all
of your document there, it's probably because you copied it to the
clipboard, not because Word "saved" the document there.

Are you by any chance working on a document that you opened directly
from an email attachment? If so, almost all the files you affected
were in a temporary directory, and were probably discarded as soon
as you closed Word. However, using Save As does make a permanent
copy of the attachment document.

Look in Tools Options File Locations. What's the folder named as
the Documents location? That's the default location for the File
Open and File
Save As dialogs.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

John Campbell wrote:
Word 2003 is saving my document as a WR?*.tmp file in the
Windows\Temp directory. The step that is supposed to rename the tmp
back to my file name does not take place. NOTE: the file is saved
in the Windows\Temp directory, not the directory in which I created
and saved the document. In addition, no copy or version of the
current changes is named by the name I assign the document when I
use CTL-S to save it. I have to use Save As each time, and navigate
from Windows/temp to the directory where I want to save. I have
AutoSave set to 3 minutes (did me no good at all, since the
recovery doc was not at the specified location), have always save
backup checked (also no good since the backup was as bad as the
original), and fast saves not checked. The only way I avoided
losing hours of work was by vaguely recalling that there might be a
tmp file somewhere I don't expect, and so was able to recover that
way without much loss.

(Details below. The material above reflects my reading of this
thread. Below does not.)

I don't want this. Yesterday, I did not realize this was happening,
and essentially lost several hours of work before realizing that
Word had saved the file (with the tmp name in Temp directory)
without saving my changes to my file. So when I opened my file to
work after lunch all of the changes from the past several hours
were missing - they were in the tmp file! Pretty much of a shock.

I have rechecked how I have tools\options\save settings, and they
make sense to me. So this is an exotic problem of some sort. The
help routines and KB have so far not given me any useful
information about how to solve it.

I have started saving Versions, but pretty soon the Bloat will
overcome my system and I will have to delete them. Markup settings
also seem to have no effect.

Thanks for any help that can be offered here.

"MW" wrote:

MY FILES IN WORD ARE NAMED LIKE THIS ~WRL1233.tmp?
WHY?

Hi John,

Just in case you missed the distinction, I suggested starting *Word* in safe
mode, and Cindy suggested starting *Windows* in safe mode. Both are
legitimate troubleshooting methods, but they're initiated differently and
have different effects.

Word's safe mode is started, as I said, by holding Ctrl while launching
Word. The effect is to prevent Word from loading any add-ins or global
templates, and preventing any macros from running at startup. That will
eliminate any problems from those sources, but not anything truly external
to Word -- such as a program that intercepts disk writes and redirects
them. I think a source like that is unlikely, because it would probably
affect all programs and not just Word.

The Windows safe mode is entered by pressing F8 while Windows is starting up
after a reboot. It limits the kinds of device drivers and startup programs
that load. For a description of what it does, go to Start Help and enter
'safe mode' in the index. You would probably want to choose 'Safe Mode with
Networking' so you can still see your server.

One other thing: In your reply to Suzanne you mentioned having Norton
AntiVirus. If that's the standard version and not the corporate version, it
may have a plug-in for Office. That plug-in is known to cause problems in
Word -- although not usually the kind you're seeing -- so it's worth
disabling it if it's there. See http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=329820
for instructions.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

John Campbell wrote:
I will try safe mode tomorrow and report back. i just noticed that
there is a similar post by Rdoughton reply by Cindy M 1/21/2005 and
1/262005 this forum. Sounds pretty much like the same problem as
mine, or very similar.

"Jay Freedman" wrote:

Hi John,

That behavior is so far away from normal Word behavior, and so unlike
anything I've ever heard of, that I wonder whether you've been
infected with some sort of virus or other nasty. Don't believe for a
minute that this is something that Word "just does" -- there's
something seriously wrong in your installation.

As a simple test, start Word in Safe Mode by holding down the Ctrl
key why you double-click the icon. Now open the same document, make
a small change, and save it. Exit Word and look at the timestamp of
the document file -- has it updated? Open again in Safe Mode and
verify that the change is still in the document.

If that works, start slogging through the procedures in
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/...peningWord.htm. While
they're aimed mostly at application crashes and error messages,
they'll also pinpoint any macro or add-in that's messing with your
Save command. Eventually you should find something for which removal
stops the problem, and replacement makes it start again. That will
be your culprit.

This newsgroup is fine for this topic, and the application.errors
group would have been appropriate as well. The regular readers
mostly inhabit both groups. We do ask that you post only in one
place if possible, and keep all related posts in the same thread.
The article at http://word.mvps.org/FindHelp/WhichNewgrp.htm will
give some advice.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

John Campbell wrote:
No - this is a file that I created yesterday. No email, and no
clipboard. I checked File locations right away - the autosave is on
a network drive, and all the rest are just where I want them,
default to the parent directory of where I am working and saving.
No fast saves, backup always, 3-minute autosave. When I click
CTRL-S or select File/save the name of the document changes in the
document header to wrl*.tmp. The problem I had yesterday was that
it never saved on my original (as created by SaveAs) file name. So
when I closed it, it saved as the tmp file. When I returned from
lunch and opened the file I thought I had saved I was in for a
major shock - none of the work was there. So I looked in autosave,
and there was no copy there either. So I opened the backup, and no
different. It was only after an hour of trying to reconstruct it
that I decided to go look in TEMP, and there found a file that
looked like it was the right size. (A lot of false starts here -
opened much junk with WordPad and/or Notepad before hitting the
right one.) Oddly enough, the date and time of the document (tmp
copy of the original, that is) was early morning, not just before
lunch. So evidently Word had been saving this without a new time
stamp over the course of the morning. This behavior is new to me,
and I have never seen any documentation of anything like it except
for the prior notes in this thread.

I am unsure of the conventions for cross-posting here. Would it have
made better sense for me to start a new thread, or looked for a more
relevant one? Should I have posted to other threads that seemed
relevant to me, or is one enough? Also, I don't see any way to sort
by date here - if I search on "tmp save" in the word section then I
get relevant posts, but I don't see a way to sort by date
descending. Is there any sort option?

Thanks again for your help.

"Jay Freedman" wrote:

Hi John,

According to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211632, a
~WRLxxxx.tmp file is a clipboard temp file. If you found most or
all of your document there, it's probably because you copied it to
the clipboard, not because Word "saved" the document there.

Are you by any chance working on a document that you opened
directly from an email attachment? If so, almost all the files you
affected were in a temporary directory, and were probably
discarded as soon as you closed Word. However, using Save As does
make a permanent copy of the attachment document.

Look in Tools Options File Locations. What's the folder named
as the Documents location? That's the default location for the
File Open and File
Save As dialogs.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

John Campbell wrote:
Word 2003 is saving my document as a WR?*.tmp file in the
Windows\Temp directory. The step that is supposed to rename the
tmp back to my file name does not take place. NOTE: the file is
saved in the Windows\Temp directory, not the directory in which I
created and saved the document. In addition, no copy or version
of the current changes is named by the name I assign the document
when I use CTL-S to save it. I have to use Save As each time, and
navigate from Windows/temp to the directory where I want to save.
I have AutoSave set to 3 minutes (did me no good at all, since the
recovery doc was not at the specified location), have always save
backup checked (also no good since the backup was as bad as the
original), and fast saves not checked. The only way I avoided
losing hours of work was by vaguely recalling that there might be
a tmp file somewhere I don't expect, and so was able to recover
that way without much loss.

(Details below. The material above reflects my reading of this
thread. Below does not.)

I don't want this. Yesterday, I did not realize this was
happening, and essentially lost several hours of work before
realizing that Word had saved the file (with the tmp name in Temp
directory) without saving my changes to my file. So when I opened
my file to work after lunch all of the changes from the past
several hours were missing - they were in the tmp file! Pretty
much of a shock.

I have rechecked how I have tools\options\save settings, and they
make sense to me. So this is an exotic problem of some sort. The
help routines and KB have so far not given me any useful
information about how to solve it.

I have started saving Versions, but pretty soon the Bloat will
overcome my system and I will have to delete them. Markup settings
also seem to have no effect.

Thanks for any help that can be offered here.

"MW" wrote:

MY FILES IN WORD ARE NAMED LIKE THIS ~WRL1233.tmp?
WHY?