Documents being renamed to .tmp name automatically

[drumkey35]

I have several users that when they are in a document, making changes to it,
sometimes it changes the name of the document to a temp file with a number
(ex. WRC#####.tmp). This is very confusing for them when they have multiple
documents open and have to switch from one to another. It usually happens
when the document is open for more than 10 minutes. I went into the Save
settings under Tools>Options and set the AutoRecover time to more than 10
minutes but it still will rename the file after a certain amount of time. Is
there a fix for this, without totally disabling the AutoRecover feature? I
don't understand why it does this. Does anybody have any suggestions?

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

In Windows, unselect the option to "Show hidden files and folders."

 

[Jay Freedman]

Peter has given you a method for not seeing these files, although they will
still exist.

It would also be good for you to understand what they are. Word is *not*
changing the name of the document; it is creating temporary files that it
requires in order to operate. As the article at
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211632 explains, many of these files must
be in the same folder as the document, and it is not possible to put them
somewhere else. All you can do is hide them.

They also are not related in any way to AutoRecover, and disabling
AutoRecover won't stop them from being created. The AutoRecover feature
creates files with an extension of .asd, not .tmp.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[drumkey35]

I apologize, I may have explained this wrong. I understand how the temp files
work in Word and why they are needed, but this isn't for temp files that are
showing up inside of the folder. I'll give an example of what I'm asking, a
user opens up a document, does some editing on it, then minimizes the window
and it may sit open for some time. When she goes back to the document to work
on it again, she brings the document window, that was minimized, back up. At
the top of the document (on the title bar), instead of having the document
title it will have something like "WRCxxxxx.tmp. She is then unable to save
it under the original title without using "Save As" and jumping through many
hoops. If she just hits save, it retains the temp file name. This is
particularly frustrating for her when she has more than one document open and
they all do the same thing. It makes it hard for her to distinguish one
document from another. Does that make any sense? I hope I explained it a
little better. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Todd

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Todd,

The explanation is perfectly clear, but I've never heard of this. It
certainly isn't normal behavior for Word, and I can't tell you why it's
happening or what you could do to prevent it.

One thing that might be involved is an outdated or badly written add-in or
macro. If there are any (see
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011514521033.aspx for an
extensive procedure for locating all add-ins), try disabling or uninstalling
them, and then restoring one at a time and trying to reproduce the problem.
You may be able to isolate one add-in as the cause -- or maybe not.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It certainly isn't normal behavior, and I don't have any better idea of the
cause than you do, but Todd is not the first to report this puzzling
behavior (which is analogous to documents suddenly becoming read-only).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[laurie_g]

any updates on this yet? I have just started experiencing the same thing. Not
only does it rename the document the original document no longer exists in
the folder it was originally saved to. When I am forced to save the document
with a new name the original just isn't there.

 

[Twayne]

I haven't yet seen anyone mention a virus, trojan, worm, or any type of
malware either in a macro or the operating system itself. I think I'd
throw my updated AV and full arsenal of spyware detectors at this before
going much further. Worst case malware will be reasonably eliminated as
long as good programs were used.
I'd wonder if it happened to, say, Wordpad files saved with a .doc
extension, or any other applications, too. Or a text file with a .doc
extension too. If not, it'd be a word macro; if so, then the more
likely system malware would be suspected. Either way, throw all the
scanners at it.

HTH,

Twayne`