document corruption (Office 2003 Pro)

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I have previously requested help in dealing with a dissertation document which keeps insisting on getting corrupted. I have tried copying and saving as rtf and re-converting to Word, without success. I have a suspicion that the process of saving a copy progressively to a formatted CD-RW, in addition to saving progressively to the hard drive, seems to trigger corruption, with the appearance of unintelligible symbols (narrow rectangles) at the end of the document and in footers containing page numbers. Has anyone come across this possibility of saving to CD as a cause of corruption before? Needless to say I am now saving versions on the hard drive.

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I don’t understand what you mean by saving progressively. Is this part of a custom FileSave macro? If so, what is the code for that?

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Hi Dianne:
The thread that you refer to starts at post 388256. I really don’t see why the corruption should occur because you’re saving to a CD, especially since your also saving to a hard drive. While it’s true that saving to a floppy was more prone to corruption than saving to a hard drive, I haven’t heard the same for CDs (not saying it can’t be true). Are you pasting any text into the document? Perhaps there is some corruption in your fonts or styles.

I noticed in the other thread (it probably would have been better to keep this all in one thread to avoid jumping back & forth) that converting to RTF & back didn’t help. I tried your example file (in Word 2000) & changing to RTF & back cleared it up. Does your example file clean up when you try it?

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My apologies for not continuing the previous thread- blame it on long sleepless nights trying to wrestle with my wayward document as well as a myriad of other tasks!
Conversion to rtf and back didn’t correct the problem- the rectangles turned into lines.
In response to other suggestions, conversion to XML replaced the rectangles with a series of 1’s, and the Open Office conversion a series of 5’s.
By progressively saving, I meant using “save as” every few paragraphs, to save to the hard drive (I also have autosave activated).
Time for some serious plastic surgery on the monster, I think.
Thanks to all who have offered advice- your responses are certainly appreciated.

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My apologies for not continuing the previous thread- blame it on long sleepless nights trying to wrestle with my wayward document as well as a myriad of other tasks!
Conversion to rtf and back didn’t correct the problem- the rectangles turned into lines.
In response to other suggestions, conversion to XML replaced the rectangles with a series of 1’s, and the Open Office conversion a series of 5’s.
By progressively saving, I meant using “save as” every few paragraphs, to save to the hard drive (I also have autosave activated).
Time for some serious plastic surgery on the monster, I think.
Thanks to all who have offered advice- your responses are certainly appreciated.

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Out of curiousity, I put the document you posted earlier through OpenOffice, then back to .doc format. OpenOffice interpreted those characters as a bunch of page number fields. (I’ve attached the round-tripped document).

Maybe you could try going the OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org[/url%5D) route on a larger excerpt (open in OpenOffice -> Save in native OO format -> Open back up in OO -> Save out as .doc format), then clean up the page numbering cruft, and see if that helps. OpenOffice is spectacular at opening and reading files that Word won’t touch, and then returning them to .doc format without the corruption.

Just a suggestion.

Another option, similar to the RTF idea, is to save as XML, then re-open in Word.

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The postings have concentrated on repairing the document rather than the cause of the corruption. I have read that continually resaving a modified document to a floppy increases the chances of corruption. Does whatever does this apply to CD’s. If so why not resaving to the hardrive?

Thanks

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The postings have concentrated on repairing the document rather than the cause of the corruption. I have read that continually resaving a modified document to a floppy increases the chances of corruption. Does whatever does this apply to CD’s. If so why not resaving to the hardrive?

Thanks

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Hi Andrew:
That’s interesting. When I downloaded, saved the file as RTF, & then back into a doc file, the page number “5s” in your cleaned up document came out as underscores. That means that OO interprets the corruption differently, I guess. I wonder if Dianne has something that’s causing the document to be opened as “recover text from any file”.

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I still have StarOffice 6 (OOo 1.0). I opened the file and did a Save As in MS Word format. This truncated all but one of the page number fields (and/or whatever else that was). Not sure which is the better interpretation of the problems with that document…

Another thing I noticed: The original document is 25K saved from Word, 37K saved in your test, and only 12K saved in my test. I don’t have a hex editor, but that might provide further insight.

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I still have StarOffice 6 (OOo 1.0). I opened the file and did a Save As in MS Word format. This truncated all but one of the page number fields (and/or whatever else that was). Not sure which is the better interpretation of the problems with that document…

Another thing I noticed: The original document is 25K saved from Word, 37K saved in your test, and only 12K saved in my test. I don’t have a hex editor, but that might provide further insight.

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HI Andrew

Ive downloaded Open Office. I have a corrupt document I would to ‘clean up’.

In your instructions it mentions to ‘Open in Office > save in native OO format> Open back in OO> Save out as .doc format.
However in Open Office in Save As it doesnt have the option to save in native OO format.

what do you mean by saing in save in native OO format

many thanks diana

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Hi Diana,

Native OpenOffice format is the “.sxw” format (short for Star Office Writer). See the attached screenshot.

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Out of curiousity, I put the document you posted earlier through OpenOffice, then back to .doc format. OpenOffice interpreted those characters as a bunch of page number fields. (I’ve attached the round-tripped document).

Maybe you could try going the OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org[/url%5D) route on a larger excerpt (open in OpenOffice -> Save in native OO format -> Open back up in OO -> Save out as .doc format), then clean up the page numbering cruft, and see if that helps. OpenOffice is spectacular at opening and reading files that Word won’t touch, and then returning them to .doc format without the corruption.

Just a suggestion.

Another option, similar to the RTF idea, is to save as XML, then re-open in Word.

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We have a rule in our office NEVER EVER save from within office to removable media. If you need to do it, save and close the document and copy from explorer. While I can’t find any concrete evidence to support my theory we have not only experienced document corruption but also “blue screens” if removable media is used.

An annoying, intermittent problem which I think is caused by the way temp files are created in office.

Cheers

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Thank you Karen for confirming my suspicions and for some very good advice!

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Thanks Dianne – glad to be of assistance.

Another golden rule in our office is that if you work off a recovered document you make sure you save it as a different name. We work with long (250 page plus) documents with lots of graphics, cross references and such. If you recover a document, compare the file sizes from the original to the recovered doc – if that is okay then do a quick check of cross references, re-do any TOC’s or indexes and then, and only then, continue to work on the recovered document – otherwise you have to go back to the original and recreate anything you have lost.

We also have a rule to manually save every 5 or 10 minutes (don’t trust autosave) and to close out of the document at least every hour and of office every three hours. I wish I had some evidence to support my suspicions with the way stuff is “held” in memory, but it is purely based on experience. The other useful thing to do is to always work with hidden files showing in explorer and clear out any .tmp files from your folders regularly.

Hope this helps

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Try turning OFF the “Auto Save”. It has been known as a source of problems. If I remember right it was one one the things that Woody has alway said to turn off. I have not used it since Office 95.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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FYI to anyone reading: Word does not have an AutoSave feature. Instead, it has an AutoRecovery feature where it stashes away a backup (.ASD) at user-defined intervals that it will *try* to recover in the event of a crash. If you close the document normally (even by accident), Word clears the backup and you’re back to square one. While I have AutoRecovery on, I certainly don’t rely on it to save my document because it absolutely does not do that.

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It is NOW called “Allow Background Saves” in Office 2003.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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(Edited by jscher2000 on 19-Jul-04 11:35. Changed picture.)

I turn off “background saves,” too. But this is not an automatic save. It refers to how quickly Word returns your cursor to you after you click Save. By submitting Save or Print tasks to a background thread, you theoretically can continue working on your document more quickly. But this is unnecessary with faster computers and if you switch around among things quickly, it can lead to Word becoming confused (particularly if your environment is heavily customized) or potentially unstable. So yes, this should be turned off, but turning it on wouldn’t solve the problem of forgetting to save.

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As always, I have learned so much valuable information from fellow Loungers -thanks to all.

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As always, I have learned so much valuable information from fellow Loungers -thanks to all.

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(Edited by jscher2000 on 19-Jul-04 11:35. Changed picture.)

I turn off “background saves,” too. But this is not an automatic save. It refers to how quickly Word returns your cursor to you after you click Save. By submitting Save or Print tasks to a background thread, you theoretically can continue working on your document more quickly. But this is unnecessary with faster computers and if you switch around among things quickly, it can lead to Word becoming confused (particularly if your environment is heavily customized) or potentially unstable. So yes, this should be turned off, but turning it on wouldn’t solve the problem of forgetting to save.

Reply | Quote

It is NOW called “Allow Background Saves” in Office 2003.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

Reply | Quote

FYI to anyone reading: Word does not have an AutoSave feature. Instead, it has an AutoRecovery feature where it stashes away a backup (.ASD) at user-defined intervals that it will *try* to recover in the event of a crash. If you close the document normally (even by accident), Word clears the backup and you’re back to square one. While I have AutoRecovery on, I certainly don’t rely on it to save my document because it absolutely does not do that.

Reply | Quote

Try turning OFF the “Auto Save”. It has been known as a source of problems. If I remember right it was one one the things that Woody has alway said to turn off. I have not used it since Office 95.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Great advice, thank you Karen. Will follow your suggestions, and it will probably be benefical to me as well as the document!

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Great advice, thank you Karen. Will follow your suggestions, and it will probably be benefical to me as well as the document!

Reply | Quote

Thanks Dianne – glad to be of assistance.

Another golden rule in our office is that if you work off a recovered document you make sure you save it as a different name. We work with long (250 page plus) documents with lots of graphics, cross references and such. If you recover a document, compare the file sizes from the original to the recovered doc – if that is okay then do a quick check of cross references, re-do any TOC’s or indexes and then, and only then, continue to work on the recovered document – otherwise you have to go back to the original and recreate anything you have lost.

We also have a rule to manually save every 5 or 10 minutes (don’t trust autosave) and to close out of the document at least every hour and of office every three hours. I wish I had some evidence to support my suspicions with the way stuff is “held” in memory, but it is purely based on experience. The other useful thing to do is to always work with hidden files showing in explorer and clear out any .tmp files from your folders regularly.

Hope this helps

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Thank you Karen for confirming my suspicions and for some very good advice!

Reply | Quote

We have a rule in our office NEVER EVER save from within office to removable media. If you need to do it, save and close the document and copy from explorer. While I can’t find any concrete evidence to support my theory we have not only experienced document corruption but also “blue screens” if removable media is used.

An annoying, intermittent problem which I think is caused by the way temp files are created in office.

Cheers

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