atw: Re: Making Iterative Back-Ups of Work-In-Progress Files (Was: More on Word 2010)
- From: "Christine Kent" <cmkentau@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:22:39 +1000
In summary, is it worth exploring with your client possible other reasons
for all these crashes. This might turn into a blog articles -
troubleshooting crashes.
Word may be the trigger for the crashes but is not the cause. Word ALONE
does not cause these crashes. If it was the CAUSE, my computer would also be
crashing all the time, so there is another variable. I think this is the
danger in routinely dismissing all problems as Word problems - and if we do
this we assume we don't need to explore other options.
As I said, I worked through an entire catalogue of terrible old files (using
my own computer and Word 2007) and I personally did not experience crashes
except the inevitable late afternoon memory glug up issues which still
happened in 2007 but have not happened in 2010 - and are easily solved with
a re-boot. So Word ALONE cannot be the problem. Word alongside other
hardware or software issues can be the problem. Solve the other issues and
the Word issue dematerialises.
So I would still want to go through some kind of routine to determine what
the CAUSE is that Word is triggering. My approach would be something like
this.
. HARDWARE PROBLEM. If people are working on sluggish systems make
sure they reboot at lunchtime and switch off at night. Many people leave
their computers running which is a disaster waiting to happen in my
experience. It will be the operating system that crashes.
. OPERATING SYSTEM PROBLEM. If any of the computers are running
Vista, get rid of it, non-negotiable. Not that really was a Microsoft
disaster! Again, it will be the operating system that crashes. If using 2007
or 2010, upgrade to Windows 7.
. WORD PROBLEM. Turn all the saves back on except background saves -
that's always posed a problem since the year dot. I have it turned on and
it has caused no problems for me, but historically it has been a problem
with earlier versions.
. WORD TEMPLATE PROBLEM. Explore what the client is doing with
templates. It might be easier to create and attach new templates rather
than fixing crashes, if my guess about templates in on the ball (and it is
only a guess).
And if I was working with systems that crashed all the time, I would also
want all manner of failsafe backups until I worked out why.
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Neil Maloney
Sent: Tuesday, 19 July 2011 6:48 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: Making Iterative Back-Ups of Work-In-Progress Files (Was:
More on Word 2010)
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=2251
639 (a different web page, discusses the process of using these files)
http://help.lockergnome.com/office/open-asd-wbk-file-Word-2007--ftopict94688
6.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-do
esnt-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-docum
ent-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.
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