Very strange Multi Mb document

[Jean-Pierre]

Hello everybody,

I received a very strange WORD document through E-Mail from an acquaintance who
does not know very much about IT in general and WORD in particular.

The mail contained an attachment of about 5 Mb as a WORD document. After
downloading it reduced to 3.5 Mb, which is quite normal, apart from the fact
that one should never send such large attachments.

The strange thing, for that 3.5 Mb document, is that it was only 3 pages long,
the "statistics" (from the "Properties" window) showing about 2000 characters,
22 paragraphs, etc. The only odd thing was the "Revision number = 34" and "Total
editing time = 137 minutes".
It shows no "Versions" from the File ---> Version.

When I saved it (just clicking on the "diskette" icon in the toolbar) the size
reduced to... 146 kb. However, as my WORD is set up to automatically create a
backup, the backup file was also 3.5 Mb.

Any clue on what caused that document to use such a large amount of space and
reduce so much by just re-saving it ? It was actually so big, because the
downloading took quite a time ?

Thank you in advance.

Jean-Pierre
Belgium

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

The document might not have been saved before it was sent and your friend
may have the "Allow fast saves" box checked under Tools>Options>Save.

--
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

 

[Jean-Pierre]

This might well be the case. I 'll try it myself and see if it gives the
problem.

Thank very much for the clue.

Jean-Pierre
Belgium

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[Jean-Pierre]

I tried to duplicate the problem, but my document remained at a gentle 30 kb. Of
course I do not know what my friend had done with her document before sending
it. So the mystery remains.

Again thank you for your suggestion, it leads to a precaution to take anyway.

Jean-Pierre
Belgium

======================================

 

[Robert]

Hi!

Whenever users have the "Allow fast saves" box checked under
Tools>Options>Save, and they make changes to a document, Word saves all the
changes that have been made. This is done repeatedly and cumulatively each
time the same document is edited and "fast-saved" (this is a bit like
making "incremental" backups of a hard drive). So when many "fast-saved"
changes have been made, the corresponding document can become very bulky:
it actually includes all the various changes made to it, even if only the
latest (official) "draft" is visible. This is considered by some as a
privacy issue because clever people can retrieve all the previous "drafts"
from such "fast-saved" documents, especially if they are saved as RTF.

If you read the Word help regarding the "Allow fast saves" option, you'll
see that Word users are advised to turn this option off before saving the
final version of a document. The final document is usually much lighter
with a standard "slow" save.

 

[Jean-Pierre]

I tried it and WORD / Notepad behave exactly like you write.

The fact that my friend's document shows a large revision number (34) indicates
that the document must have modified many times.

Note that to find the warning on "fast save" in the help, one must know that it
exist. Just searching for "fast save" does not lead to it. Thank you for telling
me.

Jean-Pierre
Belgium

========================================

 

[Robert]

The best way to find help about a Word option is to open the corresoponding
dialog and to press F1 (or click the question mark button on the dialog
title bar).
Robert

 

[aalaan]

Possibly the reason why the document is so large is that it has been heavily
edited previously with track changes on but you are looking at it with
display changes off, so a large number of changes (very large <g>) are
hidden. Try tools | track changes | display changes on screen and see if
this reveals a huge amount of changes, perhaps pages and pages of deletions.

 

[Jean-Pierre]

Hi Aalaan,

Track Change is allways "ON" on my machine, with "Final showing markup". The
document shows no change. Furthermore, when I just save the document (pressing
the diskette icon), the size drops from 3.5 Mb to 146 kb, quite compatible with
the assumption on "Fast Save" on my friends machine.

Thank you for the suggestion.

Jean-Pierre
Belgium

==============================================

 

[aalaan]

Sorry it didn't help

Hi Aalaan,

Track Change is allways "ON" on my machine, with "Final showing markup".
The
document shows no change. Furthermore, when I just save the document
(pressing
the diskette icon), the size drops from 3.5 Mb to 146 kb, quite compatible
with
the assumption on "Fast Save" on my friends machine.

Thank you for the suggestion.

Jean-Pierre
Belgium

==============================================