Why, when I’m closing a document, does Microsoft Word ask me whether I want to save changes regardless of whether I’ve actually made any changes? I’ve gotten accustomed to hitting “No” so often that sometimes I hit it when I have made changes and I should hit “yes.” So whattup?
I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this problem. But I am a compulsive savemonger, which may be part of it. I think changes as simple as a newly-added space at the end of a document can cause it to go into OCD saving mode, though.
Sometimes it’s even if you formatted it to print. It does bug me too though: No, darn it, there are no changes!
The document you are viewing probably has formulas or other fields that are automatically updated when you open the document, such as dates and page numbers in the footer of the document, table of contents etc. MS Word considers these “changes” to the document. Looking through the options ("Tools/Options’) I could not find anything to turn this feature off.
Why not just hit “yes” every time?
I’m talking about cases in which I’ve made no changes, not even a new space. Usually it’s just when I want to look something up and all I’ve done is a word search.
I created the documents myself and I didn’t put in any formulas or dates or page numbers or footers or table of contents. Just typed text (sometimes in columns or tables)
Because I don’t feel like it. I’m wondering why this feature was designed this way.
It saves a lot of people a lot of grief, believe it or not. As for me, I’m glad the feature’s there …even though I’m an anal saver as it is. :shrug:
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Because it’s annoying and unneccesary. That should be reason enough not to have to do it.
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Because when you save it again it updates the “date modified.” I often want to know when files with similar file names were actually last modified, that is, what draft they are. If I save it it appears that changes may have been made compared to a previous draft, even when they have not. (Yes, I know that I could change the file name or use other methods to determine this, but it shouldn’t be necessary.)
I have a similar experience to ascenray. Simply opening documents, which as far as I know have no complex formulas or other info that is being updated, prompts a “save changes” when I try to close it even when I have not entered any keystrokes at all. I have always wondered what feature of a document triggers this, since it doesn’t happen with every document.
Ah … this is why you are so prompted – the MS Office products seem to regard a differing view of the one that was saved as a “changed” document. For instance, if you were saved the doc while reading pg 1, then went on to read pg 2 … you’d be prompted to save even if you didn’t modify text, formatting, page setup, etc. Modifying your view of the text is enough to trigger the save window.
It obviously doesn’t “save a lot of people a lot of grief” if you haven’t made any changes.
Your second issue is one I can relate to. Indeed, I often decline to save in situations where I want the Date Modified to relect actual compositional changes. But I just roll with it :shrug:
I think folks like yourself and ascenray are probably outvoted within the entire population of MS Office users. There are many who desperately need this feature, and some more (like myself) who don’t worry about it.
Actually, that’s not it. I just tried a search, and although I closed the document from the fifth page it didn’t ask me if I wanted to save it.
I am not particularly interested in debating the utility of the feature. I am interested in knowing what actually triggers it. It doesn’t seem as if you really know the answer.
I didn’t know all the reasons it could happen … and the “page viewed” thing is more of an Excel issue (except it’s better to think of it as “tab viewed”). I went and looked up a cite for why Word does it:
There are more possible reasons given at the cite.
As for whether or not it’s annoying … that’s a matter of personal taste 
The field doesn’t have to be something created by you - it could be a field in a document template your using, including Normal.dot. The field does not need to be something that’s visible either. It could also be a macro that runs upon opening the document that’s modifying it; (the macro could also be something inherited from a templated), Do you get this when you create a new document using “File/New/Blank Document (from the list of templates that appear)”? If so, then it’s likely some macro or field got added to your Normal.dot. Also, are you linking to any content from outside of Word (e.g., pasting in an Excel spreadsheet). Word will automatically update the link to such content unless you tell it not to (in Tools/Options/General/Automatically update links).
Unhelpfully: anything that sets the “dirty bit” – the internal flag that something has changed. As noted, changes to actual document content (formatting or text) should clearly set it. It’s debated in programming circles what else should set it.
Microsoft Word sets it on metadata changes: printing or print seup will (in my experience) always do it, since it saves a record of the print record with the document. Changing the type of view (reading/normal/outline) will do it because it opens to the same view as it was last saved in, which is also saved. Older versions of Word saved if you changed the size of the window or the appearance of the sidebar–I don’t know if the 2003/2007 ones do. I’ve occasionally seen it ask to save when I took no action at all (just open/close) – this went away when I turned “fast save” off, so my guess is that it’s just Word taking the opportunity to consolidate data. It might save your last search term, I’m not sure.
Bottom line is, it’s saving the information to restore your environment, not just your content. It’s inconsistent about it (as you’ve noticed, page changes may or may not get saved, it might depend on the view selected), and I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that you’ll be able to make it predictable. I would claim that every time it happens, SOMETHING has changed – it just may not be something relevant to you.
People desperately need to be reminded to save documents which have not been changed in any way? Really?
Other way around – people need to be reminded to save documents that have been changed. Though nowhere near as common as it once way, a lot of people still work on things for hours without saving.
Don’t ask me why – they just do.
I wouldn’t have so much of a question about this if all it did was ask whether or not I wanted to “Save” as a default anytime I closed a document. That would make some sense according to your rationale.
However, it specifically asks if I want to “Save Changes”. When I myself have not made any changes, it makes me think that Word, as is its wont, may have made some “helpful” changes on its own that are not what I intended. When I haven’t made any changes of my own, I usually want to re-open a document that is exactly the same as the one I closed. I am reluctant to “Save Changes” when I didn’t make them, and don’t know exactly what they are.
I have noticed that it especially happens with documents I have received from someone else, and which I do not wish to change in any way in order to have a record of what I received. The explanation that Word may be altering it in order is adjust it to my printer settings is interesting.
Agreed. I hate to waste paper so when I print something at work I always go in and change the printer defaults to “print both sides”. And every time I do this, I get the “Do you want to save changes” prompt when I close the document. What I don’t get is, it’s not even a change to the document, it’s a change to the print driver settings – if I said “yes” to the save prompt, when I opened the document up again, I’d still have to go into the printer settings to set it back to “print both sides”, it doesn’t keep that setting.