why do my word docs dont open correctly on other laptop with word

  • Thread starter Thread starter laurence
  • Start date Start date
L

laurence

both machines are xp and have small business 2003 yet docs saved on each do
not open on the other - they ebcome corrupted.

How can this be resolved?
 
How are you opening the files on the machines, not from a flash drive I hope?
Always copy Word files from a flash drive to the hard drive, then
open/edit/resave the files. Working on flash drives is a sure-fire way to
corrupting Word files.
Come back if this is not the case, all the best.
DeanH
 
How are you transferring the documents between the two PCs?

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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When I emailed different docs in both directions they opened fine.

However when I saved to the flash drive and copied to the other hard drive
the doc was corrupted when it was opened ...

I cant understand why the flash drive failed as it used to work between one
of the laptops and an ASUS EEE PC.

Still, v. pleased with the advice as I can at least email docs from machine
to machine but still puzzled ...
 
NEVER save directly to the flash drive. Save to the hard drive and
copy it over.
 
Someone here strongly recommended that one should not SAVE to a floppy
drive (or flash drive, I suppose, now, too). Instead, they say to save
to your hard drive and then copy the file to the removable drive.

Noöone has ever said WHY this ridiculous situation exists, or whethere
there is any way to change Word so it works like it intuitively
should, like every other program in the world.

- Character
 
It's been said several times recently. Apparently Word needs lots of
space for temporary files used in the process of saving, and that can
be unavailable in small media.
 
The reason has been give countless times and there is no way that the user
can change the way in which the software works in that respect.

As for the reason, take your pick:

- You are likely to corrupt the file
- When working on a document Word writes temporary file to disk, which
may exceed the available space on a floppy or flask drive
- The process of writing the above temporary files can be impacted by the
speed with which a floppy or flask drive can be accessed.

--
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, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com
 
Doug said:
The reason has been give countless times and there is no way that the
user can change the way in which the software works in that respect.

As for the reason, take your pick:

- You are likely to corrupt the file
- When working on a document Word writes temporary file to disk,
which may exceed the available space on a floppy or flask drive
- The process of writing the above temporary files can be impacted by
the speed with which a floppy or flask drive can be accessed.
Click to expand...
Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the try, but it really doesn't help much.

The first reason simply restates "don't do it because it may not work".

The second applies to OPENing a Word doc from a floppy. It shouldn't
apply to SAVEing it, and should usually not apply to large capacity
flash drives. And here, there are many other applications that will
internally put their temporary files other than where the opened file
resides if that medium is unavailable by reason of size, write
protection, etc.

The third might make some sense, but only if MSWord's SAVE function
operates at significantly faster speeds, or with significantly less
monitoring and error checking than a simple copy (implying that Word
might not be using what we used to call the standard common Input
Output System or IOS, and instead is using its own hardware-level
commands - which I doubt). If any applications should be able to use a
Microsoft operating system properly, one would imagine they'd be
Microsoft applications :)

What I was really trying to ask was what is the MSWord technology that
causes a file to be written so differently to a fixed hard drive than
to a removeable device that corruption often occurs. This doesn't
happen with ANY other application I know of. For example, if the media
has insufficient space, you get a message saying 'media has
insufficient space' - not a message-less corrupt file.

- Character
 
Character said:
The second applies to OPENing a Word doc from a floppy. It shouldn't
apply to SAVEing it, and should usually not apply to large capacity
flash drives. And here, there are many other applications that will
internally put their temporary files other than where the opened file
resides if that medium is unavailable by reason of size, write
protection, etc.
Click to expand...

Word isn't one of them. Word creates several temporary files in the working
folder, the size and variety depending on the document and what you are
doing with it . If you save to removable media, that working folder becomes
the removable media.

Never ever read from, write to, or print from floppy with Word. These are
the most certain methods of ensuring document corruption. Word documents and
their temporary files can easily outstrip the available space.

Flash drives are a more grey area. They may have the space but they don't
have the protection offered by hard drive filing systems. It is possible to
save to a flash drive providing you are absolutely certain that the flash
drive has the space to accommodate the file, and any temporary files that
may be created, and you don't remove the flash drive until Word has cleared
the temporary files associated with the document. It is the latter that is
usually at the root of document corruption.

If you are aware of the problem, the simple solution to the problem is don't
read from, write to or print from documents on removable media with Word. If
you want to use flash drives then copy the file to and from the hard drive.

You will find a macro at http://www.gmayor.com/automatically_backup.htm
which is designed to transparently copy the working document to a flash
drive, avoiding the problems and providing the warnings when there is
insufficient space or the flash drive is not available.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
 
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