# MS Word doing something wonky

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-word-doing-something-wonky/282038>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 29, 2004, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-word-doing-something-wonky/282038 "2004-12-29T01:35:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![danceswithcats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9e8a1a/32.png) [@danceswithcats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/danceswithcats)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-word-doing-something-wonky/282038/1 "2004-12-29T01:35:31Z")

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Didn’t find this one in search-OS is XP Pro with Office 97 Pro suite.

If I open a .doc via Word, everything is fine. If instead I open Administrators documents, drill down to the folder desired and click the file to open, I get a darn balloon that says "C:…(rest of path)\wonky.doc is being used by (insert my name). Do you want to make a copy? I have to tell it no so I can read the file-if I ignore it, it will auto save to the same folder with a ~copy after 30 seconds or so.

It’s not like I have the document open in two places, so why has Word suddenly gotten concerned with making copies of stuff for me that aren’t needed or desired?

I suspect the hateful paperclip is behind this. 😉

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**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-word-doing-something-wonky/282038/2 "2004-12-29T02:23:57Z")

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IIRC this is a bug in Office 97, run an auto-update to get the latest SP and patches for it. Or ditch it in favour of Open Office 🙂

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**Author:** ![Rex\_Fenestrarum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rex_fenestrarum/32/7265_2.png) [@Rex\_Fenestrarum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rex_Fenestrarum)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-word-doing-something-wonky/282038/3 "2004-12-29T04:48:21Z")

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> [@Askance](#):
>
> Or ditch it in favour of Open Office 🙂

Wow - that was helpful. :rolleyes:

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**Author:** ![Dragwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dragwyr/32/2855_2.png) [@Dragwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragwyr)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ms-word-doing-something-wonky/282038/4 "2004-12-29T05:01:17Z")

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I had the same problem on my system when I had Office 97 here. The only fix I found was to upgrade my version of MS Office to Office XP.

As an interim fix, I did install Open Office ([Which you can download here.](http://www.openoffice.org/) It is a very good alternative if you don’t need MS Access.