endless loop Word problem

[Barbara White]

One of our staff experienced this problem recently. I responded to
his request for help by suggesting that he install SR-1. He did, but
he's still experiencing the problem...any ideas about why this might
be? Here is a summary of his situation...

While working last night on a Word document (in Word 2000 on a PC), I
tried to save it and my laptop started heavily using the disk drive.
After 5-8 minutes, Word said the file was too big to save. My file,
which originally was 500K, now had a temporary file of 19 megabytes,
and I could no longer print the file. I replicated the same behavior
on my desktop, with the same file (although this time I created a 59
megabyte temporary file before I managed to kill Word). After
rebooting and getting the same behavior (which virtually locked up the
laptop, not even allowing the task manager to kill Word), I discovered
a work around. I saved the file as RTF, and all was well.

[Others in my project] have experienced the same problem. We were
using files that had "Track Changes" on, and the files had lots of
changes to be tracked. (My DOC file was 500K, even though it was only
4 pages long with no fancy pictures.)

The Microsoft web site recommends trying to save damaged files as RTF
as the first recovery action; saving as HTM files is the next.

[Cindy Meister -WordMVP-]

Hi Barbara,

In situations like the one described (track changes with lots of
changes), Word has to write a lot of information to scrap files, and
integrate lots of information into the file. And the more of this there
is, the more likely document corruption or an overload of the PC
capacity is.

1) The users should make sure that Tools/Options/Save/Allow Fast Saves
is OFF

2) Make sure that File/Versions is never used (at least not when
tracking changes)

3) Perform a full save (File/Save As) or close and save at regular
intervals to force Word to resolve some of the scratch files and release
memory

4) If at all possible, integrate the changes more often (accept/reject),
then perform a full save. If document size does not decrease at this
point, copy all but the last paragraph mark to a new file (this is the
first choice, before RTF, for fighting document corruption).

> While working last night on a Word document (in Word 2000 on a PC), I
> tried to save it and my laptop started heavily using the disk drive.
> After 5-8 minutes, Word said the file was too big to save. My file,
> which originally was 500K, now had a temporary file of 19 megabytes,
> and I could no longer print the file.
>

> [Others in my project] have experienced the same problem. We were
> using files that had "Track Changes" on, and the files had lots of
> changes to be tracked. (My DOC file was 500K, even though it was only
> 4 pages long with no fancy pictures.)
>

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister
http://www.mvps.org/word
http://go.compuserve.com/MSOfficeForum

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