TMP files

[Wess]

is it possible to open .tmp files from Word, please?
Thanks
Wess

 

[Graham Mayor]

Sometimes but they probably won't contain anything useful - certainly not
your document. Use the recover any text from file option.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

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Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Actually, the .tmp files created in the document folder while the document
is open *do* contain the document. Everytime you save, the previous version
(or previous but one if you have "Always create backup copy" enabled) is
saved as one of these ~wrlxxxx.tmp files. If you open one, it is a complete
document, one or more revisions back. These are normally deleted when you
close the document (so you won't normally have access to them if you've lost
the document itself), but if you save frequently (as most of us have trained
ourselves to do), they can proliferate alarmingly. If the document is large,
they can quickly fill a floppy. And if you are writing directly to a CD,
they can't be erased. This is just one reason we advise users never to save
directly to any form of removable media.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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[Graham Mayor]

Hmmm. I find that these particular tmp files are so volatile that I have not
yet been able to capture one in order to either rename it or open it. They
seem to disappear at will, even when the original document is open. True
enough they are created when you save a document, but they disappear here
before I can grab them to rename, copy or whatever - and that's with the
original document still open. This leaves only the file ~$lename.doc in the
working folder and a load of smaller tmp files in the user temp folder that
do not amount to a copy of the document - so what's the secret of grabbing
the ~wrlxxxx.tmp files?

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Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I can only tell you that I have been able to do it. <g> I don't ordinarily
see them because I don't display All Files, but I have opened them and
examined them at least once.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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[P. Balmanno]

I had a situation where I had to be able to open WordPerfect *.wpd & *.wpt
files using MS Word. In short the business went from WordPerfect to a new
standard using MS only apps.

So, instead of opening the 8,000 + files one by one to convert them I used
the DOS command 'ASSOC' in a batch file on the PCs that needed the
conversion. There were no problems in doing this as Word converts the files
when they open up the user only needed to save it in the new word format
(*.doc).

I was aware that two operating systems were being used NT4 & W2K so the DOS
bat file worked. Here is what I would try in your case.

First in command prompt type the following:
Assoc .doc [EnterKey]
This will return a file association for *.doc files used by your version of
MS Word
For example:
..doc=Word.Document.8

Next create a *.bat file or use the DOS command in command prompt/cmd.exe as
follows:
ASSOC .tmp=Word.Document.8
from now on on your system the *.tmp files should open up using MS Word

Note: you can associate the files to WordPad as well.
In command prompt type the following:
Assoc .rtf [EnterKey]
This will return a file association for *.rtf files used by your version of
MS WordPad
For example:
..doc=Word.RTF.8

 

[Bob S]

I can only tell you that I have been able to do it. <g> I don't ordinarily
see them because I don't display All Files, but I have opened them and
examined them at least once.

When I saw your post I went looking around, and I found a few leftover
~wrlxxxx.tmp files lying around in the Application Data\Microsoft\Word
directory. They had dates from last year. I tried opening a couple of
them using Word and sure enough they had complete versions of old
documents in them.

According to the Microsoft KB article these files should be clipboard
files. The "Save" temporaries should be ~wrdxxxx.tmp files.

I suppose that a clipboard file might contain the whole document if
you selected the whole document and copied it to the clipboard. That
could have been the case for the files that I found.

Of course it is also possible that the KB article is not telling the
complete story.

Bob S

 

[Bob S]

I can only tell you that I have been able to do it. <g> I don't ordinarily
see them because I don't display All Files, but I have opened them and
examined them at least once.

A few more tidbits from experimentation...

The "save" temporary files indeed are the "d" files, I could see them
come and go when I made the test documents large enough.

The "l" files are indeed clipboard files. It took a while to force
Word to create one though. It appears that Word keeps the clipboard
files in memory until it runs out of space, and then pushes some of
them (maybe the oldest?) out into disk files.

All of these files were in the document directory; I don't know why
Word sometimes puts them in Application Data...

By the way: in the process of experimenting with this I had Word
working on two documents at once, each over 50M characters. One was
over 63MB, the other over 67MB. Word seemed to be doing just fine.
Then I also opened the ~wrlxxxx.tmp file that it was probably still
using, and it was still OK. Then I asked it to display the Clipboard
task pane. That put it into a "not responding" loop long enough for me
to lose patience and kill it. Recovery worked just fine; both of the
gigantic files came back.

I guess Word XP is fairly robust in some ways...

Bob S

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Thanks for the confirmation. The fact that these are supposed to be
Clipboard files has confused me, too, since often I haven't used the
clipboard at all in the documents, much less copied the entire document.
<shrug>

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Graham Mayor]

Nor does it explain why on my systems the temporary files don't stick around
long enough to be examined

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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