MASTER DOCUMENTS

CRASHES AND CORRUPTION

Use Application Recovery to Mitigate a Crash

The Annoyance:

Every now and then, Word hangs but doesn't crash. I can see my document, but I can't do anything to save my latest changes.

The Fix:

Depending on the version of Word you're using, you may be able to do some damage control.

First, if what you can see of the document contains unsaved changes, take a picture of what's there and save it. With the focus on the Word window, press Alt+Print Screen. That copies a picture of the Word window to the Clipboard. Open Paint (Start All Programs Accessories Paint) and press Ctrl+V to paste the picture. Press Ctrl+S and save the picture in a convenient folder. (If the Word window has gone white or is showing chunks of other applications, skip this step.)

Next , if you're using Word XP or Word 2003, launch Microsoft Office Application Recovery by choosing Start All Programs Microsoft Office 2003 Microsoft Office Tools Microsoft Office Application Recovery (for Word 2003), or Start All Programs Microsoft Office Tools Microsoft Office Application Recovery (for Word XP). In the Microsoft Office Application Recovery window (see Figure 2-7), select the entry for Word and click the Recover Application button.

Figure 2-7. Microsoft Office Application Recovery can sometimes save data even after Word has hung.

Microsoft Office Application Recovery attempts to recover the data in the open document, and then displays a dialog box (see Figure 2-8) offering to send an error report to Microsoft.

Figure 2-8. Choose whether to send an error report on the crash to Microsoft. If you've reported the error before, it's probably not worth doing so again.

The recovery then takes place, and Microsoft Office Application Recovery automatically restarts Word. Any recoverable documents appear in the Document Recovery pane with their types (Recovered or Original), details of when and how each was saved (for example, "Saved during recovery" or "Last saved by user "), and whether they have been repaired.

Click a document to open it, or right-click a document and choose a command from the shortcut menu (see Figure 2-9, top). Choose the Show Repairs command to display the Show Repairs dialog box (see Figure 2-9, bottom), which lists any errors that Word has repaired. Sort the errors by error description or by location, click the error you want to see, and click the Go To button. Check the document for damage, and then save it under another name .

RECOVERY IN WORD 2000

If you're using Word 2000, you don't have Microsoft Office Application Recovery. Instead, right-click a blank space in the taskbar or notification area, choose Task Manager from the shortcut menu, and then click the Applications tab. Click the Microsoft Word item, and then click the End Task button. Restart Word manually. If there's a viable AutoRecover file, Word opens it for you automatically; check it and save it under another name if it's usable. If there's no AutoRecover file or it's not usable, open the latest temporary document in the folder in which you were working, and then try to recover your document from it.

Figure 2-9. Document recovery usually enables you to recover much of the document that you were working on when Word crashed. The document may contain errors that Word has repaired.

Turn Off Error Reporting

The Annoyance:

I've sent Microsoft an error report 50 times about the same error in Word, but I haven't received a response. I don't need to see these useless error-reporting prompts again.

The Fix:

Turn off error reporting for Word. Press Windows Key+Break (or open the Start menu, right-click My Computer, and click Properties) to display the System Properties dialog box. Click the Advanced tab, and then click Error Reporting.

In the Error Reporting dialog box (see Figure 2-10), you can select the Disable Error Reporting option to turn off all error reporting. However, it's usually more useful to click the Choose Programs button, click the Add button at the bottom of the dialog box, and add each program for which you want to disable error reporting. Type the name of the executable file for Word winword.exe or click the Browse button and browse to it. Click the OK button to close each of the four open dialog boxes.

Figure 2-10. If Word keeps crashing with the same error, you can turn off error reporting.

Recover a Document After a Crash

The Annoyance:

Word crashed again. Microsoft Office Application Recovery didn't do any good this time, and when I try to open the document, Word crashes yet again.

The Fix:

This doesn't sound good, but all is not yet lost. Here's what you should do:

1. Open a Windows Explorer window to the folder that contains the document and make a couple of copies of the file. The easiest way to create a copy is to Ctrl-drag the document within the folder, but Copy and Paste works fine too. These copies are insurance against the possibility that your efforts to open the document will end up trashing it further. Leave the Windows Explorer window open.

2. Start Word again, choose File Open, select the document, click the drop-down arrow on the Open button, and choose "Open and Repair." If all goes well, Word will fix whatever is ailing the document and open it. Choose File Save As and save the document under another name so that the entire document is written afresh. With the document still open, choose File Save As again, choose Rich Text Format in the "Save as type drop-down list, and save the document as a rich text file. Close the document, and copy the new document and the rich-text document to a backup medium in case the problem returns.

3. If Word can't open the file but is set to create backup copies of documents (i.e., if the "Always create backup copy" box on the Save tab of the Options dialog box is checked), try to open the backup file. In the Windows Explorer window, switch to Details view (View Details), and click the Name column heading to sort the files by name. Double-click the backup file, which will be named Backup of <document's name>.wbk . If it opens, save it under a different name. For good measure, save it in Rich Text Format as well, as described in the previous step.

4. If Word isn't set to create backup copies, look in the Windows Explorer window for a temporary file of the document. In Details view (View Details), click the Type column heading twice to produce a reverse sort by file type. This will put the "Word Temporary File type near the top of the list. Identify the latest temporary file of your document by its date and file size (its file size will be nearly the same as that of your document file). Right-click the file, click "Open with," and choose the Word item (for example, Microsoft Office Word). If the document opens, save it under a different name. Save it in Rich Text Format as well, as described in Step 2.

5. If you don't have a backup copy or a temporary file, try using WordPad to open the document that makes Word crash. In the Windows Explorer window, right-click the file, click "Open with," select WordPad, and click the OK button. WordPad understands only some of Word's formatting, so it has a better chance of not getting confused by errors in the document's formatting table. If WordPad can open the document, save it under a different filename. You'll have lost the formatting that WordPad can't read, but you should have the text of the document, plus the basic font formatting.

6. If WordPad can't open the document and you're prepared to lose even the font formatting, use Word's "Recover text from any file" converter to recover the text. Choose File Open, select "Recover text from any file in the "Files of type" drop-down list, select the document, and click the Open button. Save the resulting document under another filename. You'll need to manually remove extraneous information and odd characters from the document, and you'll have to reformat headers, footers, footnotes, and endnotes, which will appear as normal text paragraphs in the document.

7. If Word's "Recover text from any file" converter can't open the file, open it with Notepad instead. This is the last resort and will cost you all the formatting in the document, but you should be able to recover the text. Depending on how the document is formatted, you will probably need to replace box-like characters with paragraph marks, but this tends to be far preferable to re-creating the document from scratch. In the worst case, the text may contain corruption that you will need to remove manually. Save the file under a new name from Notepad, and then open it in Word.

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Tip: If you have another word processor installed on your computer, try using it to open a damaged version of the document. Word processors such as Corel WordPerfect and OpenOffice.org include text converters that can read most Word features but are fairly tolerant of document corruption, bypassing it as features they can't interpret. Again, you're likely to lose much of the document's formatting, but you may be able to recover most of the text.

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Control or Turn Off AutoRecover

The Annoyance:

Every few minutes, Word seems to save something by itself; I see the readout flicker across the status bar. But I know it's not saving my document, because the document still contains unsaved changes.

The Fix:

What you're seeing is Word's AutoRecover feature automatically saving a backup version of the document in case Word, Windows, or your computer crashes. When you restart Word after a crash, it automatically opens the latest AutoRecover documents so that you can choose which to recover (see the previous Annoyance, "Recover a Document After a Crash"). If you close a document normally, Word deletes its AutoRecover document.

If you've lost work in Word documents to crashes, chances are you now save the active document whenever you've made any changes to it that you want to keep. (Yes, I too obsessively press Ctrl+S at the end of each burst of typing.) In this case, AutoRecover offers little benefit. To turn it off, choose Tools Options, click the Save tab, and uncheck the "Save AutoRecover info every box.

If you tend to forget to save your documents, make sure the "Save AutoRecover info every" box is checked and set a suitable length of time in the Minutes drop-down list. The default is 10 minutes, which is fine if you're poking at a document. If you're typing 100 words per minute, shorten the interval and check "Allow background saves" so that you can keep working through most of the AutoRecover process. (Of course, you're better off saving your documents more frequently.)

Word saves AutoRecover documents using the name AutoRecovery save of <document's name>.asd . For example, the AutoRecover document for a file called Benefits statement.doc would be named AutoRecovery save of Benefits statement.asd . Word saves AutoRecover documents in the folder specified in the "AutoRecover files" line of the File Locations tab of the Options dialog box (Tools Options). The default location for Word 2003 is your %userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Word folder.

UNDERSTANDING TEMPORARY FILES

Temporary files are files that Word creates to store data temporarily as it works on the documents that you have created deliberately. Word uses several different types of temporary files for different purposes. You don't need to know all the details to use Word effectively, but understanding the basics of temporary files not only clears up various mysteries about how Word works but also can help you recover from assorted annoyances.

The temporary files you're most likely to notice are those that Word keeps in the same folder as the document itself. These contain versions of your document that you have saved earlier in the current editing session. When you close the document normally, Word deletes the document's temporary files. In a long editing session, the temporary files can stack up, and Word may take several seconds to delete them. This is why Word sometimes seems to take a surprisingly long time to close a document that you've already saved.

The temporary files you're next most likely to notice are the owner files that Word uses to lock the documents you (or other users) open. When someone opens a document, Word creates an owner file, giving it a name consisting of the document's name with the first two characters replaced by ~$. For example, for a document named Second Thesis.doc , Word creates the owner file ~$cond Thesis.doc . (Very short document names receive a different treatment.) When you try to open a document, Word checks for the existence of an owner file, which would mean that someone else currently has the document open. Word deletes the owner file when the document is closed. Owner files won't trouble you when Word is running properly, but if Word crashes, these files may be left undeleted. If this happens, you may need to delete them manually to restore normal behavior.

Word creates several other kinds of temporary files, including a temporary file that it creates at startup to enable you to use OLE (Automation) objects in your documents. You're unlikely to need to work with these other temporary files, except to delete them en masse after Word has crashed.

Open Files Saved in Another Format

The Annoyance:

Back when the TRS-80 was pretty hot, I had a much smaller computer from a maker that's long since disappeared. I've still got a handful of floppies with documents I created back thenin whatever format that computer used. I'd like to open the documents in Word for a quick trip down Memory LaneI mean, to write my memoirs.

The Fix:

Sure, go right ahead. Word will try to identify the converter needed. If there's an issue with the encoding, Word displays the File Conversion dialog box (Figure 2-11 shows an example) so that you can choose the correct encoding for the document.

Figure 2-11. When opening a file saved in another format, you may sometimes need to choose the correct encoding.

Depending on the format that the old computer used for saving text, you may get pure text, text with some formatting codes, or text in what appears to be an advanced state of decomposition.

Even if the text is adulterated, you can clean it up easily enough in Word by using a sequence of find-and-replace operations. The easiest way to do this is to record a macro as you perform the necessary replaces and then run it on each of the documents in turn. You might also consider inserting all the documents into a single document so that you can clean them up all at once.

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Tip: If you have documents created by a custom word processor in a format that Word can't read, and you still have access to the word processor, try saving the documents in a format that Word can read. Most word processors offer common formats such as Text Only and Rich Text Format (which includes standard formatting such as bold, italic, fonts, and alignment).

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Batch-Convert Many Files Between Formats

The Annoyance:

My company switched from WordPerfect to Word, which is okay. Nothing could be simpler than opening all those old WordPerfect documents and converting them to Word documents...except that there are about 10,000 of them, and I'm going to be here all weekend doing it!

The Fix:

Relax. This is the kind of operation you can easily automate with a macrobut you don't need to, because Microsoft provides the Batch Conversion Wizard for you.

First, see if the Batch Conversion Wizard is installed on your computer. Choose File New On My Computer (in Word 2003) or File New General Templates (in Word XP) to display the Templates dialog box. In Word 2000, choose File New to display the New dialog box. Click the Other Documents tab and see if the Batch Conversion Wizard is listed.

If the Batch Conversion Wizard isn't installed, install it. Choose Start Control Panel Add or Remove Programs, select the Office item, and then click the Change button. Select the Add or Remove Features option, and choose the advanced customization option. At the advanced customization screen, expand the Microsoft Word item and the Wizards and Templates item under it. Click the More Wizards item and select "Run all from my computer from the shortcut menu. Finish the installation, return to the Templates (or New) dialog box, and click the Other Documents tab.

Select the Batch Conversion Wizard item and click the OK button. The wizard creates a new template and displays a dialog box (see Figure 2-12). Follow the procedure for specifying whether you want to convert to Word or from Word, designating the source folder and destination folder, selecting the files, and setting the conversion running.

Figure 2-12. The Batch Conversion Wizard enables you to convert a batch of files to or from Word in a single operation.

Make Local Copies of Documents on Network or Removable Drives

The Annoyance:

My company has several offices, and the way the servers are set up, it's hard to tell which document is on a local server and which is on a remote server. Opening a document on a remote server not only takes ages, but sometimes the connection fails when I'm trying to save changesso I lose my work.

The Fix:

If you don't know how fast a connection you'll have with the server that's providing the file, the easiest fix is to use Windows Explorer to copy the file to your hard disk. When you've finished working with it, copy it back to the server. This two-step process is tedious but effective, and it works with all versions of Word.

Word XP and Word 2003 include an option intended to help you avoid losing data when working with remote files. Choose Tools Options, click the Save tab, check the "Make local copy of files stored on network or removable drives box, and click the OK button.

In theory, that should take care of the problem, but Word is more complicated than that. First, Word interprets "removable drive" to mean a drive with a total capacity of 3 MB or lessin other words, a floppy drive. Zip or other removable disks, memory cards, and CDs don't qualify. Second, if the drive does have a capacity of 3 MB or less, Word copies the file to your Temp folder anyway, regardless of whether the "Make local copy of files stored on network or removable drives" box is checked or unchecked. In other words, the option really applies only to network driveswhich, luckily, is probably what you're most interested in anyway.

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Tip: Word automatically makes a copy of any file you open from a floppy because a floppy disk has such a low capacity that it will quickly become full if Word stores temporary files on it. Floppy disks also read and write data far more slowly than hard disks, so storing a copy and keeping the temporary files on the hard disk is much more efficient.

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Once you've checked the "Make local copy of files stored on network or removable drives" box, Word makes a local copy each time you open a file from a network drive. The temporary document is stored in a temp file with an auto-generated name with the .tmp extension (for example, ~WRC1744.tmp ) in your %userprofile%\Local Settings\Temp folder.

As you make changes to the document, Word uses the temporary file as its reference file instead of using the document on the network drive. When you save the document, Word saves the changes in the temporary file and then saves them to the network drive. (Word saves the changes in the temporary file first in case the network drive has become unavailable.) When you close the document, Word deletes the temporary file.

INSTALL THE WDLOCALCOPY ADD-IN

If you find that Word XP tends to uncheck the "Make local copy of files stored on network or removable drives" setting even though you've set it, install the WdLocalCopy.dll add-in, which ensures that this checkbox is selected whenever you run Word:

1. Browse to the Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://support.microsoft.com), search for Article 313397, and click the "Download WdLocalCopy.exe Now" link.

2. Extract the file to your Office folderfor example, Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10 .

3. Choose Start Run, and type Regsvr32 and the path to the WdLocalCopy.dll filefor example, regsvr32 "c:\program files\microsoft office\office10\wdlocalcopy.dll" (including the quotation marks if the path include spaces, as this example does). Then click the OK button. This installs the add-in so that it runs automatically each time you start Word.

Understand Document Locking

The Annoyance:

I work in an office, and my colleagues frequently manage to keep open the documents I want to work on, leaving me stuck with the File in Use dialog box and the choice of Read Only, Notify, or Cancel.

The Fix:

When someone opens a document, Word creates a locking file called an owner file to prevent anyone else from opening the document until the first person closes it; Word then deletes the owner file, removing the locking. (See the sidebar "Understanding Temporary Files," earlier in this chapter for more on Word's owner files.) If you want to work with (i.e., change) a locked document, there's no real solution other than tracking down whoever opened it and asking that person to close the file. The owner file contains that person's name, but the information is taken from the User Information tab of the Options dialog box, so it may not be correct.

At least the choice Word offers you when you try to open a locked file (Figure 2-13) is marginally better than the old "Abort, Retry, Fail?" error message, one of the banes of DOS users. You have three options:

• Clicking the Cancel button cancels the request to open the document.

• Clicking the Read Only button opens a read-only copy of the document. You can save this document under another name, in another folder, or both, but you'll need to merge any changes you make with the original document when your colleague has finished working with it. If you simply want to print the document, Read Only is a good choice.

• Clicking the Notify button opens a read-only copy of the document, which again you can save under a different name, in another folder, or both. The only difference is that if the original document becomes available while you're working with the read-only copy, Word displays the File Now Available dialog box (see Figure 2-14). Click the Read-Write button to open the file. If you haven't made any changes to the read-only copy of the document, you can now edit the original document as usual. If you have made changes to the read-only copy, Word displays the File Changed dialog box (see Figure 2-15), which offers you the options of discarding your changes or saving them in a different document so that you can open the original document. You can then integrate the changes manually or, even better, by using Tools Compare and Merge Documents (Tools Merge Documents in Word 2000). You can also click Cancel to cancel your request to open the file that was locked for editing.

Figure 2-13. Only one person can work on a document at the same time. If you try to open a document that someone else already has open, Word displays the File in Use dialog box.

Figure 2-14. If the original document becomes available, you can open it and then decide whether to abandon any changes you've made to the copy you've been editing.

Figure 2-15. If you've changed the read-only copy of the file, click Save As in the File Changed dialog box to save your edits in a new file. You can then merge them into the original document.

Deal with Spurious "File in Use" Messages

The Annoyance:

I get a "File in Use" error when I know that nobody else has the document open.

The Fix:

This error means that the owner file (see the previous Annoyance, "Understand Document Locking") hasn't been deleted as it should have beenfor example, because Word or Windows crashed, or because the PC suffered a power outage . If the error message says the file is in use by "another user" rather than giving the user's name, the owner file has probably been corrupted.

To deal with this error, delete the owner file. The crash or outage will probably have left stray temporary files as well, so it's a good idea to clean these up, too:

1. Close all applications, restart Windows, and log in again.

2. Choose Start Search to open a Search Results window. If Search Companion displays the "What Do You Want to Search For?" list, click "All files and folders."

4. Choose the appropriate location in the "Look in" drop-down listfor example, Local Hard Drives.

5. Click Search and give your computer a few minutes to work.

6. Select all the files, right-click anywhere in the selection, hold down the Shift key, and choose Delete from the shortcut menu to delete the files.

After deleting the owner file and any temporary files, try opening the document again. If Word still displays the "File in Use" dialog box, check your hard disks for errors, and then defragment them.