Document recovery panel

[LurfysMa]

Last week, we bought new PCs and are also upgrading from Office 2000
to Office 2007. I have only used Word 2007 a few times and am trying
to get used to the completely new interface.

I just opened a document (A) containing a log of home repairs. The
last time I opened it was 6-8 months ago on the old machines using
Word 2000.

When Word opened, there was a new panel on the left entitled "Document
recovery". Inside is a list entitled "Available files" containing a
single document (B), which is a completely different document. I am
pretty sure that document B has never been opened on the new machine.

What does this mean?

The help indicates that document B had some kind of a problem (wasn't
saved properly). I don't think it has ever been opened on this machine
(just a week old). It has been opened on the old machine since the
files were copied over and there were no errors.

This message has nothing to do with document A, right?

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Probably not. It probably belongs to LurfysDad.

--
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

 

[Karebac]

I am the only user of my Windows XP machine at work, and I occasionall
get that message regarding certain documents not saved properly.

I dont want to take chances on loosing a file, so I click on each one
and SAVE AS slightly changing the file name by adding something to th
end of it, like SAFETY.

It seems to happen to me if I leave documents open in Word, and shu
down my machine.

It is crucial if you truly value your work to back up frequently, an
to keep a series of backups going back some days or weeks.

Very complex Word, or Excel, or Access files can become corrupted
which would force you to revert to some previous, uncorrupted version.
I call such backups "snapshots". I have Access snapshots and Quickboo
snapshots going back for months. All it costs is a little disk space
which is cheap nowadays. It is better to be safe than sorry.

I greatly depend upon my Sancor 4 gig memory stick, which I daily wea
about my neck. Backup up regularly with some zip program (I us
WinAce), saves disk space.

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi LurfysMa,

Last week, we bought new PCs and are also upgrading from Office 2000
to Office 2007. I have only used Word 2007 a few times and am trying
to get used to the completely new interface.

I just opened a document (A) containing a log of home repairs. The
last time I opened it was 6-8 months ago on the old machines using
Word 2000.

When Word opened, there was a new panel on the left entitled "Document
recovery". Inside is a list entitled "Available files" containing a
single document (B), which is a completely different document. I am
pretty sure that document B has never been opened on the new machine.

What does this mean?

The help indicates that document B had some kind of a problem (wasn't
saved properly). I don't think it has ever been opened on this machine
(just a week old). It has been opened on the old machine since the
files were copied over and there were no errors.

This message has nothing to do with document A, right?

One thing is not clear to me: is the machine where you're seeing this
one that previously had Office 2000 (or another previous version) on it?
I get the impression not, but just double-checking...

Normally, you'll see the pane you describe when Word has crashed, and
the document(s) listed were open at the time Word crashed. Since version
2003 Word has been able to note what files were open, recover their most
recently saved state (whether saved by the user or "auto saved") and,
when required, effect repairs in the document structure.

Sometimes, this list will show up at a later time if the user didn't
explicitly save/reject an entry. Sometimes the registry entry that
controls the list gets hiccups and doesn't "clean" the list as it ought.

I would find it extremely odd, however, that a document is listed that
was never opened on the machine. In the five years since the
functionality was introduced (I include beta testing) I've never seen a
report of that happening.

Note that a document can be damaged and still open OK in Word (this goes
for any version). But the document recovery process will check for
certain things and clean them up / report them, even though the problem
is not "critical". Most often, I've found that numbering in older
documents gets tagged as a problem.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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