Word Temp Files
Marek Williams
chapters in a book. Over the course of a couple days all nine have
been opened and edited. Usually two or three were open at a time.
Every time I went to open one of the files I kept seeing more and more
files in the folder, all starting with ~WRL. Eventually there were so
many that I decided I would delete them. After selecting them all it
turned out there were 88 of them.
Unfortunately, none could be deleted -- sharing violation. At the time
four of the chapters were open. I closed them all and as each one was
closed about 20 of the files disappeared.
I find these files very annoying. Word's file->open dialog box is
pathetically small and lists only about ten files at a time. The 88
~WRL files were all alphabetized at the beginning, so to get at my own
files I have to click, click, click, click to scroll over.
There was also a backup file for each chapter that were clearly
labeled as backup files. So these ~WRL files weren't backup files.
What were they? Why does Word create massive numbers of files as I
work on a document? Is there any way to stop it from behaving this
way? Or at least can I make it put them in some special folder where
they won't be in the way and I can ignore them?
OK, I just experimented. I opened one document, deleted one word, and
saved the document. As soon as I did the save Word created a backup
file and a ~WRL file. So then I restored the word and saved the
document again. This time there was still only one backup file, but
Word immediately spawned a second ~WRL file. Every time I did a save
it created a new ~WRL file, and without deleting any of the old ones.
And each one is bigger than the main file.
Man, at this rate I'll never get this book done. I'll have to buy a
farm of 100-gb hard disks just to hold all the ~WRL files. I hit
Ctrl-s every few minutes as I'm working. I sure hope someone can tell
me how to stop this proliferation of files.
--
Bogus e-mail address, but I read this newsgroup regularly, so reply here.
Cindy Meister -WordMVP-
> So I'm working away in Word 2000 on nine different documents that are
> chapters in a book. Over the course of a couple days all nine have
> been opened and edited. Usually two or three were open at a time.
> Every time I went to open one of the files I kept seeing more and more
> files in the folder, all starting with ~WRL. Eventually there were so
> many that I decided I would delete them. After selecting them all it
> turned out there were 88 of them.
>
Word *needs* to create these files. It stores your editing changes here,
and also uses them to "restore" your system if Word should crash.
Once you close a document, and close Word, they should disappear.
They'll only not disappear, normally, if Word *has* crashed. Once you've
exited and rebooted Windows, you should be able to delete any of the
temp files that Word does not delete on its own.
It's a good idea to close down Word and restart it, every once in a
while, if you're using it intensively. "Memory leakage" has improved
tremendously since the days of Word 6.0, but it still helps...
> I find these files very annoying. Word's file->open dialog box is
> pathetically small and lists only about ten files at a time. The 88
> ~WRL files were all alphabetized at the beginning, so to get at my own
> files I have to click, click, click, click to scroll over.
>
Set File/Open to not show "all files *.*", but only *.doc files or "all
Word files", instead.
Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister
http://www.mvps.org/word
http://go.compuserve.com/MSOfficeForum
This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question
or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-)
Suzanne S. Barnhill
sound: don't display them, and don't worry about them. They are deleted when
you close the file (you don't even have to exit Word), which it is a good
idea to do from time to time anyway. The only time these become a real
problem is when you are operating in an environment where your permissions
don't allow you (or Word on your behalf) to delete files; then they *do*
pile up.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
"Marek Williams" <a...@example.com> wrote in message
news:1cv4juk63uodkiohb...@4ax.com...
Jack Goodfellow
old tmp file as it creates a new one. The accumulation of
tmp files can cause problems on smaller hard drives, which
was my case not too long ago. When working on 10-20 Mega
documents, the proliferation of big tmp files made it
necessary to close Word and reopen to be able to continue
working. I would imagine it fragments the drive as well.
This is not acceptable.
>.
>
Suzanne S. Barnhill
capable of admitting that the behavior exists. <sigh>
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
"Jack Goodfellow" <jack.go...@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:18bf401c22c04$26978230$3aef2ecf@TKMSFTNGXA09...
Marek Williams
<sbar...@mvps.org> dijo:
>I agree that these are puzzling and distracting, but Cindy's advice is
>sound: don't display them, and don't worry about them. They are deleted when
>you close the file (you don't even have to exit Word), which it is a good
>idea to do from time to time anyway. The only time these become a real
>problem is when you are operating in an environment where your permissions
>don't allow you (or Word on your behalf) to delete files; then they *do*
>pile up.
This is a standalone Windows 2000 computer and I'm the sole user.
There are only two accounts, Administrator and Marek, and Marek has
full administrator privileges. Nevertheless, I logged off and back on
again as administrator, launched Word, and it still piles up a new
temp file with every save. So it's not true that they pile up only if
you don't have permission to delete them. Besides, it deletes them
fine when I close the document, so clearly I have permission to delete
the files.
I also checked the Save tab in Options and I have Allow Fast Saves
unchecked, but Always Create Backup Copy is checked. Allow Background
Saves is also checked, as is Save Autorecovery Information, which is
set to every ten minutes. But I don't think any of these settings have
anything to do with it, because I can watch in Explorer and see the
new temp file created each and every time I hit Ctrl-s, and never
until I hit Ctrl-s.
They do disappear as soon as I close down the document, but that is a
real pain. I'm working on a book which is divided into 16 chapter
files. I need to have them all open at once. And I'm constantly
switching back and forth and making an edit here, an edit there,
sometimes dragging several paragraphs from one file to the other
because I decided the information in those paragraphs belonged in a
different chapter. This kind of activity will result in hundreds and
hundreds of temp files being created. And each temp file is as big or
bigger than the main file. I can't believe this is by design. Surely
it's supposed to delete the old temp file whenever it creates a new
one. That's why I think it must be some setting on my machine that I
haven't hit upon yet.
Does it really delete the old temp file on your machine when you
resave a document?
Cindy Meister -WordMVP-
> I can't believe this is by design. Surely
> it's supposed to delete the old temp file whenever it creates a new
> one. That's why I think it must be some setting on my machine that I
> haven't hit upon yet.
>
It is by design. It happens all the time on my machines, as well. This
is simply the way Word was designed to work. I mean, somewhere it
needs to keep track of all your 100 available "UNDO" changes...
Used to be (Word 6.0), whenever you saved, these were lost. Now
they're still there. But Word has to be able to track where they were,
and what they did, and what was the document state before they did.
Word's powerful; but a lot has to go on behind the scenes that it can
do what it does. And most of it is going on in these temp files.
Better Word writes the temp files, than try to hold all this
information in RAM. Just imagine what that would mean...