As someone who is currently working on a program that automates saving some environment settings, allows explicit saving of others, and has some overlap, this is just a common side-effect of a complicated code-base. It gets especially complicated when you add in many different versions of the document type and the program. Maybe some version of .doc or Word used to save those settings. Maybe someone changed an underlying function that was keeping the prompt from coming up in the case of a real change, and inadvertently caused the prompt to appear at some unnecessary times. Maybe some unrelated bug caused an error in your document, and some other part of Word catches and automatically fixes it every time you open it from now on, which always registers as a change.
The software I work with is much less complicated than Word, but I still run into weird bugs like this when I’m working through all the different settings to test functionality and constantly switching between versions to reproduce bugs. And, while I sometimes am annoyed enough to track down and fix the bug, something minor like this will never be a high-priority bug for me.
I’m using Word 2000 on a Windows XP machine, and this doesn’t happen to me if I just open an ordinary file and make no changes. Although it will ask me if I want to save if all I do is look at the file properties, e.g. how many words in the document.
I flinched when I read this. Lovely lovely Word, always being “helpful”. For important documents I usually dump them into PDF format with the date in the filename- that way you get something that’s pretty much guaranteed to look exactly the same, permanently.
A common issue is that Word files come in many versions, ie Word 95, 97, 2000, XP, etc. From Word version to version some of the file format changes are huge, others are minor.
Each version of the program can read all older file versions. If somebody sends you a Word 2000 file & you open it with, say, Word 2003, it opens normally. What happened internally is a silent conversion from 2000 to 2003 format. If all you do is look around in the file & then try to close, Word will prompt to save changes.
Each version of Word has a setting to either save files in its native flavor or in the flavor of the prior version. This is so when you’re the only person in your office with the new version you can save things that other folks with the old version will be able to open.
As time goes on, most folks have the new version. The propblem arises in that there is nothing to remind people to turn that feature off once everybody they deal with has the new software.
We once went out to a customer having Word weirdness among their 20 users. They were all on the 2000 version of Word but half of them were saving all docs in Word 95 format and the other half were saving in Word 97. Not a single person in that office was saving in the native format of the current version. Reset that & all was well.
I think you’re probably making a change you didn’t notice. Opening to read and search should not trigger the save question on exit. Try it. If it does, likely the LSLguy explanation about different versions.
As to why, well most likely because yes there are still people out there who either don’t have the autosave turned on or don’t have the habit of saving files as they work. Second, and what I use the feature for, is I’ve accidentally made massive changes (deleted by accident) parts of docs, or just changed the printer settings, or :smack: forgot to save as I was working on something. The popup window should be “hey dumbass, did you forget to save as you were working or did you just do a stupid mistake that you don’t want saved?”
At least for me, I play around with Excel pivot tables all the time to get a certain view of things. Often times it’s easier just to close, and not save, than to try undo all my pivoting. Same thing in Word, especially with formatting. Gee, I’ll see how this looks…
A simple trick that an old boss that was a grad student under Stephen Hawking taught me for collaboration. when you save, always save a higher version. For example, save file as dumbass1, then make changes and save as dumbass2, etc. Anyone can come in and understand this system and start working on the latest version. Then you can lable the last version dumbassfinal and delete all the draft versions.
the MS program OneNote, in which I do 95% of my work these days, is autosaved as you type. It’s the complete opposite. Either way works once you get used to it. OneNote by the way is an awesome program for anyone who is an old school pen and spiral notebook kinda guy.
You are being confronted with a stupid program that was programmed to consider an insignificant modification of data as important as writing an entire book. The programmers wanted to be safe rather than smart.
I know little about Word’s internal quirks, but am intimately familiar with Pagemaker, which says you have changes to save if you print the document or change the view (enlarge or reduce the screen view), neither of which should require re-saving.
My personal philosophy is DON’T say SAVE if you KNOW you didn’t plan to make any changes. Why? Because computers and some programs are notorious about screwing up a file without your knowledge, and to save just invites overwriting a known good file with one that might be corrupted. Rare? Sure, but I’ve seen it happen.
Typically, you won’t see the corruption until much later, and then it will be a big mystery how it got there. Just remember, the stupid program makes no distinction between intended changes and accidental ones, or who did them.
And as others have said, resaving will usually update the time stamp, which may confuse you if you are trying to roll back changes later. (Oddly, Pagemaker does the opposite, and NEVER updates the time stamp for a SAVE, only if you SAVE AS.)
Not that backups aren’t a good idea anyway, but that’s another story…
That’s my general rule too. If I didn’t make any changes to a document myself, I close without saving to avoid inadvertent changes that may have been made by Word, as well as to preserve an accurate time stamp.
Of course, sometimes that has caused problems when I have had multiple versions of a document open and forgot which one I was working on. Although that sort of thing is my own dumbass fault, it would be easier if Word actually gave you accurate messages on whether a file has been changed by the user or not.
Don’t delete normal.dot if you have created any styles or customized settings. Rename it and restart. If you don’t get the problem with a new normal.dot, you’ve found the culprit and can look inside for what’s doing it.
So, acsenray, did you check out the smart tags bug as reported by MS and suggested in a previous post of mine? (It’s not a bug, but a feature, says MS.)
You’re absolutely right, but 99% of my clients wouldn’t know what a style was if it spit in their face, and the possibility of editing normal.dot is not in their vocabulary. YMMV.