recover in word 2000

[Larry Randall]

I agree that Word *should* not crash, but it does -- and
often -- whether or not you have any add-ins! It is
simply "buggy" software. The causes of most Word crashes
relates to "memory leaks", mis-directed pointers, and the
temporary files that it creates - and often fails to
remove.

If you run Word, you *must* do a disk cleanup at least
once each week. You *must* also Defragment at least once
each week - once per day if you are a heavy user. These
steps will *minimize* the crashes. Also, if you have less
than 512 MB of RAM, upgrade to at least 512 MB.

Larry Randall
Certified Word Expert

-----Original Message-----
hi

how do you recover files when word has crashed. It

creates the file $whatever and is greyed out but when you
open this file it just comes up with a load of random
characters.

 

[Greg Maxey]

Larry,

I am not a certified expert, but I use Word everyday
practically all day. It rarely crashes and I rarely take
the measures you indicate are critical. I have about half
the vital memory you mention.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I also am not a certified expert, but I also use Word every day (all day).
It almost never crashes. I have defragmented my hard drive *once* (and even
then against the advice of Windows, which said it wasn't fragmented enough
to need it). I do keep the system clear of temp files.

--
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.

 

[Jean-Guy Marcil]

Bonjour,

Greg, Suzanne,

How do you do it? My Word crashes so often (maybe not everyday, but a few
times a week at least) that I do not even get upset anymore, it has become
matter of fact!

Could it be due to the fact that I am using a non-US version? Could the
other language version be more crash prone?

|| Larry,
||
|| I am not a certified expert, but I use Word everyday
|| practically all day. It rarely crashes and I rarely take
|| the measures you indicate are critical. I have about half
|| the vital memory you mention.
||
||
||| -----Original Message-----
||| I agree that Word *should* not crash, but it does -- and
||| often -- whether or not you have any add-ins! It is
||| simply "buggy" software. The causes of most Word crashes
||| relates to "memory leaks", mis-directed pointers, and the
||| temporary files that it creates - and often fails to
||| remove.
|||
||| If you run Word, you *must* do a disk cleanup at least
||| once each week. You *must* also Defragment at least once
||| each week - once per day if you are a heavy user. These
||| steps will *minimize* the crashes. Also, if you have less
||| than 512 MB of RAM, upgrade to at least 512 MB.
|||
||| Larry Randall
||| Certified Word Expert
|||
|||
|||
|||| -----Original Message-----
|||| hi
||||
|||| how do you recover files when word has crashed. It
||| creates the file $whatever and is greyed out but when you
||| open this file it just comes up with a load of random
||| characters.
||||
|||| Is there a way of recovering it fully??
||||
|||| thanks
|||| .
||||
||| .

--
Salut!
_______________________________________
Jean-Guy Marcil - Word MVP
(e-mail address removed)
Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Although "localization" should in general apply only to the UI, Help, and a
very few variations in field structure (such as using a semicolon instead of
a comma as an argument separator), I suppose it could affect stability as
well, if only because localized versions have to be created fairly quickly
after the RTM English version is complete. But if you are experiencing very
frequent crashes, you may be what someone at the MVP Summit described as
"screwed users"--users whose apps crash much more than can reasonably be
accounted for.

I hope you are sending a report to MS every time you crash. Not only does
this increase the amount of data they have to deal with, but if your crash
is caused by a specific problem, (a) it increases the likelihood that
they'll look harder at that issue (their resources are allocated on the
basis of frequency as well as severity of an error), and (b) if it's a known
issue, you're more likely to get a response that will help you deal with it.

I assume you've stepped through
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm to eliminate any of
the likely problems with Normal.dot, the Registry, add-ins, printer, etc.,
that might be causing your crashes.

--
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.

 

[Jean-Guy Marcil]

Bonjour,

Dans son message, < Suzanne S. Barnhill > écrivait :
In this message, < Suzanne S. Barnhill > wrote:

|| Although "localization" should in general apply only to the UI, Help, and
a
|| very few variations in field structure (such as using a semicolon instead
of
|| a comma as an argument separator), I suppose it could affect stability as
|| well, if only because localized versions have to be created fairly
quickly
|| after the RTM English version is complete. But if you are experiencing
very
|| frequent crashes, you may be what someone at the MVP Summit described as
|| "screwed users"--users whose apps crash much more than can reasonably be
|| accounted for.
||
|| I hope you are sending a report to MS every time you crash. Not only does
|| this increase the amount of data they have to deal with, but if your
crash
|| is caused by a specific problem, (a) it increases the likelihood that
|| they'll look harder at that issue (their resources are allocated on the
|| basis of frequency as well as severity of an error), and (b) if it's a
known
|| issue, you're more likely to get a response that will help you deal with
it.
||
|| I assume you've stepped through
|| http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm to eliminate any
of
|| the likely problems with Normal.dot, the Registry, add-ins, printer,
etc.,
|| that might be causing your crashes.

Thanks for your input...

After posting my message, I thought about something...

There is one factor that seems to increase the likelihood of Word crashes on
my system.... I often do work for clients based on document they send me as
a base. Since most of them want to save money, they do not want me to
reconstruct the document from scratch, so I work from the document they send
me. It seems that those documents cause more crashes than if I work from
documents I create form my machine. I think it is because the documents I
get from my client have often changed hands many times, and even changed
Word version many times before they get to me.. Needless to say that those
many users are not Word proficient (otherwise they would not need my
services!), and they often do contradicting things in their documents..
Could that be a good crash cause?

TIA

--
Salut!
_______________________________________
Jean-Guy Marcil - Word MVP
(e-mail address removed)
Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Yes. At the MVP Summit, we had a discussion with the Word tech team about
the difficulty of dealing with poorly formatted documents. Most of us agreed
it was generally preferable to sanitize them and strip them down before
starting rather than try to fix them. At minimum, I print out the document
(if I haven't been given a printed copy) so I have a reference for the
creator's formatting intentions, then make a copy of the document from which
I remove all formatting (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+Q, Ctrl+Spacebar, then apply Body Text
style; remove section breaks and page breaks, if any). I then create a new
document based on the template I want to apply and use Insert | File (or
Copy/Paste) to insert the stripped document into the new document. Even at
that, if the document has been converted from WordPerfect, a round trip
through HTML may be required to get a "virgin" document to work on.

--
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.

 

[Jean-Guy Marcil]

Bonjour,

Dans son message, < Suzanne S. Barnhill > écrivait :
In this message, < Suzanne S. Barnhill > wrote:

|| Yes. At the MVP Summit, we had a discussion with the Word tech team about
|| the difficulty of dealing with poorly formatted documents. Most of us
agreed
|| it was generally preferable to sanitize them and strip them down before
|| starting rather than try to fix them. At minimum, I print out the
document
|| (if I haven't been given a printed copy) so I have a reference for the
|| creator's formatting intentions, then make a copy of the document from
which
|| I remove all formatting (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+Q, Ctrl+Spacebar, then apply Body
Text
|| style; remove section breaks and page breaks, if any). I then create a
new
|| document based on the template I want to apply and use Insert | File (or
|| Copy/Paste) to insert the stripped document into the new document. Even
at
|| that, if the document has been converted from WordPerfect, a round trip
|| through HTML may be required to get a "virgin" document to work on.
||

Thanks for confirming what I thought.

The steps you described are precisley the ones many clients do not want to
pay for... So I usually end up doing it anyway because otherwise I deliver
an error prone document, and of course it is my fault then!

But I am getting better at convincing them to pay the little extra for a
"professional finish", when really, it is basic stuff!

--
Salut!
_______________________________________
Jean-Guy Marcil - Word MVP
(e-mail address removed)
Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If they're paying you by the hour, then our point was that it would
generally take longer to clean up a file bit by painful bit than to start
from scratch and apply styles sensibly and systematically. Explain that
they'll probably end up paying less by allowing you to do it the way you
think is best.

--
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.