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Hello Christine, I'm replying to selected bits out of each comment only, for brevity, not missing anything significant out ... I am saying that, given they have backed up their systems in normal and responsible ways, then the Word backup facilities (I am using the word generically) are, in my experience, pretty sound as a second line of defence. Yes, agree fully with that. I just hate losing one or two days' work (hasn't happened for a long time now, though) and suffer a bit with my clients (including the current ones for whom I've been doing work for just over a year now are using Word 2007) when they manage to lose even more days' worth of work, so I'm just happier having a system in place that's better than "pretty sound". Most people may never have the problem of documents crashing and not being able to recover them and, if so, autosave and autorecover can be relied on, should one of their documents ever crash, to work as intended, and will work as intended almost every time (see web page reference below and the Microsoft "Note" as quoted below to support "almost every time"). My preferred process now for effecting this kind of security is to use offsite backups. And that's a terrific way to go too. I'm not comfortable with the new cloud computing paradigm – which probably says more about me than it says about the technology – and every time I read about, for example, Google mail not being available to millions of users for days at a time, whatever, I get further turned off using someone else's server. Understand how unlucky one would need to be to have that happen, though, just at the time that one needed a backup file and the cloud server was offline or hacked into, etc. I also can't access back-ups on the cloud when I'm working for a week in PNG or Fiji in the client's offices and don't have full access to the Internet, nor does the manager that I'm doing the work for ... (1) Can you point to the documentation that explains exactly how and where Wra####.asd, Unsaved-####.asd and [name].bak files are saved. (2) I was not aware that they were not dedicated complete files and I will certainly add that to my blog if that is the case. As documents can be fully recovered from these files, I had assumed they were complete files. My mistake for not being “technical”. (1) Yes, and I'm including in this response web pages where others have had problems with these files, have a look at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/107686 (as per my previous mail, discusses where these files are stored). http://askville.amazon.com/word-document-back/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=2251639 (a different web page, discusses the process of using these files) http://help.lockergnome.com/office/open-asd-wbk-file-Word-2007--ftopict946886.html (on this page is, "I renamed each of these files to .wbk and tried to open them. Word said it cannot open it because it is of an unsupported file type.) http://www.wordbanter.com/showthread.php?t=53116 (on this page, this Word MVP guru says "If you rely on autorecover, you are going to be very disappointed.") http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/31879985/how-to-manually-recovery-my-word-from-asd-file.aspx (on this page someone used their initiative, as follows: "I ran into this problem today - a word 2007 file I was working on (on a work desktop PC) got corrupted and seemingly vanished when I was trying to save it - once I did my hunting and found the ASD file I couldn't get it to open with Word 2007... so I took a copy on a memory stick to my laptop and was able to open it using "openoffice dot org writer". I was able to rescue all the text from the ASD file and put it back where it was meant to be in a word doc within 5 minutes.") http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/asd-file-doesnt-convert/01504ffa-8e05-4687-bb74-5541fcbcafb2 ... that's a quick selection, anyone wants to do a thorough trawl through the Net for all relevant pages where people have had problems with these files and/or otherwise recovering crashed Word 2007 and 2010 documents, which problems they shouldn't be having, be my guest. (2) Only from experience, on one of the two occasions I tried to recover a crashed 2007 document for a client and wasn't able to do it, the client came here and we went through the process as documented by Microsoft to use the .asd and .bak files to get the document back (and I had to turn on viewing hidden files for him first, I've lost track now, are they supposed to be hidden?). We were able to get the files open on his machine in Word 2007, but they weren't complete. On the second occasion, I sent an email containing the steps required through to the other client after failing to do anything with the .docx file he sent to me for recovery, plus talked him through the process on the phone (I have a phone headset which makes that less painful) and again the documents that were 'recovered' were not complete. In one or more of these instances, 'not complete' meant getting garbage characters strewn throughout what remained of the document. I'm happy that these files might NORMALLY be full copies, but let's also go back to the Microsoft warning on the web page quoted above and in my last mail: "Note AutoRecover or AutoSave does not replace the Save command. You should use the Save command to save your document at regular intervals and when you finish working on it." ... by the way, while I'm raising these things on the austechwriter forum and can get passionate about them from a technical viewpoint (who needs to get a life ???), I don't think I'd ever put them into training materials such as is your forte, all this is just too far off the beaten track to justify inclusion. Since I'm a throwback and don't use 2007 or 2010, I can't confirm whether the .asd and .bak files are complete copies of the document or not, perhaps you'd like to check, I'm certainly prepared to accept that Word 2007 and 2010 may now do this (although, if that's the case, why is there two different types of files?). Grab a single .asd file, take it to a different machine, go through the recovery process and I'd be very interested if the entire document does come back. The .bak files probably are complete, sounds like it but don't know, however in my own experience as stated I've opened .bak files on the client's machine in Word 2007 and have been told by the client that the document was not complete and a few day's work was missing, and I can only rely on the client's word for that. The 'recovered' documents that opened with funny characters throughout them were resurrected, from memory, from .asd files. (1) Even as an old hand, do you never forget? (2) For 2010 I see no reason at all for turning this off, and have never needed to. (1) Not so far. I do have documents crash every now and again and often I think, oh no, I haven't been saving it, only to find I last did a Control-S five or six minutes ago, so I no longer really even notice when I'm doing it. It's a habit with me now, built up over the last 30 years of using word processors and losing work if I didn't do hard saves (I started out on an Atari ...) (2) My current client I've been doing the work for over the last 12 months or so (one of the guys in the project team) was having document crashes in Word 2007 ... I suggested he turn off everything in the save options and since then, which was around March, I think, the crashes have stopped. Of course, more than just the autosave function was turned off but I've found that's a key one when that type of problem i.e. regular document crashes for no apparent reason, is happening. Anyone else out there with any experience on this? Please provide links to the documentary evidence of this. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/107686 on which page Microsoft itself says (3rd time lucky !!!): "Note AutoRecover or AutoSave does not replace the Save command. You should use the Save command to save your document at regular intervals and when you finish working on it." How does ( ... saving versions in the same file ...) do this? Can you provide a link explaining it. I am not familiar with this so will add it to my blog. Well, how about that. For Word 2007 / 2010 this function is "Removed from product". (Reference: Microsoft Excel sheet, "Locations of Microsoft Office Word 2003 commands in Microsoft Office Word 2007") For Word 2003 users, take a look at: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/about-saving-versions-of-a-document-HP005253799.aspx Backups, saved to location of original file. Location cannot be changed We're at cross-purposes here I think, unintentionally so. What I'm on about is iterative back-ups of different versions of the same document on an e.g. daily basis, and I wasn't clear enough about that. My understanding is .asd and .bak files are for the last document session and I have no idea, if one does copy the document file each day and change the file name of the copy to include the current day's date, how long the accumulated .asd and .bak files are kept for, nor how easy it is to work through them to find the back-up copy for three Fridays ago ...There is NO user invoked version control in standalone Word, which may be what Neil is referring to. Yes, sorry I haven't been clearer. I’ll expand in my material on my blog when I get the additional information from Neil. I pride myself in giving information that can be trusted, and if the information on my blog is not correct, I will certainly fix it. Just to mention again, there's a difference between the cracks-in-the-carpet technical granularity I tend to jump into and what is reasonably relevant and applicable in everyday life. I have lots of different people from a number of different countries and backgrounds with differing skill levels and experience in using Word sending me documents built using even Word 97 and sometimes, not always but regularly throughout the year, something that has been done to or within one of these documents results in it crashing while I'm working on it. Additionally, clients come to me to recover crashed documents they can't open, including after trying Open and Repair. So I'm just a "bit" more paranoid and fanatical about all of this than most would be ... I've taken a bit less time in responding with the above comments than I normally would, there was a fair bit to cover, apologies in advance if my brains dropped out anywhere along the line ... Neil. |
