Irritating problem in xp - help?
 

Hullo. My work finally decided to upgrade my deteriorating POS windows 98 machine, so they bought me a whole new Dell system with windows xp (sorry I don't know if it's home or pro at the moment but I can check tomorrow). So I've spent the past week fiddling with it in between working, getting it so it's how I want to use it.

I discovered today that it's saving a copy of word documents I open from my email into "my documents." This is very bad and has to stop! Does anyone know how to stop this? I've been looking in MS xp help, looking around the internet, went to annoyances.org, but can't find any mention of it. I am using opera, but I really don't think that's the problem because that's the browser I always use and it's never done that before.

Here's what's happening:

I go to my webmail account and open an email containing a word document.

I "open" (not "save") the document and "save as" to the location where I want it. (I tried saving it without opening it but ran into some problems - first it wouldn't work at all, and then it did but gave me a document that word couldn't find the file pathway for. Weird.)

Once the document is saved to the correct location, I work on it.

I later find that a copy was saved to my documents when I opened the email.

I really don't want to have to go into my documents and delete them all at the end of each work day. Blech. Anyone know about this?

Under "tools" and then "save" there is an option to "always create backup copy".

You might see if that is checked--if so, uncheck it.

Ah. I will certainly check tomorrow morning, thank you.

Another thing you can do is modify the location of "My Documents" so that is always defaults to another folder. You have to edit the registry to do this. The key to edit is:
HKCU,Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders,Personal,0x20000,"%PERSONAL%"

There is also a link to this on Microsoft's website:
<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/learnmore/honeycutt.mspx">here</a>

This is a more extreme solution. I think there is probably a setting in Word (What version are you using?) That should let you turn this off.

Thanks for the idea, but that doesn't actually help because the documents in question are saved to our file server and get changed as soon as I get my perfectionistic little hands on them. Since the copy it's saving is the "fresh off the boat" version, not the thing of beauty it becomes once I've had my way with it, they are useless to keep for any reason.

I'm not sure what version of word it is, I guess I'll have to check that out too. It's kind of odd having a machine where I wasn't involved in the installation, etc. process at least to the point of knowing what's been put on there. I'll take a look.

Er...I checked in word under tools>options>save and saw the "always create backup copy" box, but it was not checked. So now I don't know what the problem could be, it sounded like that would have been it. It's xp home BTW, with Office 2000 (which is what I had before).

Your company went cheap with the Home edition. Open up Word-Tools-Options-File Locations. Modify whatever you seem fit. Hope this solves your problem.
Yeah, damn those IT Nazi....our servers (files, print, mail, etc) get rebooted several times a week, sometimes during work hours!

Yes, that's oh-so typical of them. :rolleyes: I was astonished that I got a new system at all, all it took was a couple of years worth of bluescreens. Part of my problem was the old so-called IT guy had the temperment of a 7th-grader and would withhold help, software etc. depending on his mood that day. The new guy has a much better personality but we are discouraged from so much as speaking to him while he's here because he charges by the hour. So needless to say asking for help is not really encouraged.

Okay, so I have fished around where you suggested, but seeing as how it's apparently saving a backup copy even though the little box isn't checked (and I checked and un-checked it just to make sure), I don't see any other solution except maybe to route documents straight to the recycle bin by default.

If you look few lines below the "Always create backup copy" option there is another option that says "Make local copy of files stored on network or removable drives" (I have Office 2003, so I'm not absolutelly sure if it's also on 2000). Make sure that is unchecked.

Hmm, I don't have that option. I have it set to auto-save every 10 minutes, and "allow background saves" is also checked. What exactly is a background save?

Coming straight from the office help:

"Allow background saves - Saves documents in the background while you work. A pulsing disk icon appears in the status bar when Word performs a background save"

BTW, what folder does Word create the files in??

Thanks, vinaur, I guess I could have looked that up for myself, huh? That would not appear to be my problem though.

It's saving a copy in My Documents when I open the file. I have to remember to go in there at the end of the day and delete them all, which is simply annoying and time-consuming. And I know it's saving the documents as they appear when they first come to me, because the first thing I start doing when I get them is making changes.

It sounds like your administrator may have installed a program that does this automagically . . . in order to make sure that no one loses anything.

I found another solution . . . <a href="http://kb.indiana.edu/data/agtt.html?cust=078537.71924.30">here</a>

hope that helps.

I tried changing the default location for word documents to the recycle bin, but it won't let me do that. So for the meantime I just created a sub-folder in My Documents to route things to, so at least they'll all be in one spot when I go to delete them. I must say, this is most annoying.