Unable to save files in Word, Excel & OUTLOOK 2000 2

[Nigeldk]

Over the last weeks Excel and Word and OUTLOOK 2000 refuse to save files, yet I can copy them to wordpad and save to directories. I receive three types of messages"
In word 'This is not a valid file name.
Try one or more of the following:
*Check the path to make sure it was typed correctly
*Select a file from the list of files and folders'
In Excel
'Your changes could not be saved to ", but were saved to a temporary document named 'cc899900'. Close the existing document, then open the temporary document and asve it under a new name'
In OUTLOOK
'Cannot save the attachment. The system cannot find the path specified."
Now, I have uninstalled and reinstalled the applications. I have edited the registry of all refernce to 'word' to no avail.
I have perused the system.ini and win.ini, autexec.bat and config.sys. I am using win98 SE. I think that the only option now is to do the usual six monthly reformat.
but any gurus out there had this before I would like to know how to fix it

 

[Hasit]

Strange one, but before you go through the six monthly reformat , have a look at these:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-GB;q231342&GSSNB=1

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-GB;q245021&GSSNB=1

They might help.....

 

[Nigeldk]

Thanks for the response, but it is only when attempting to save the files, I can save them in wordpad then open them in wordd 2000 and save once...then it is as if the path to any directories are not there, as if invisible...microsoft

 

[tsuji]

Hello, Nigeldk.

Make sure you have the modify & delete rights with the drive/folder where you want to save files to. Check its sharing properties by rightclick and make sure the sharing is on and full, not read-only.

[URL unfurl="true"]http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-GB;q214032[/URL]

regards - tsuji

 

[Nigeldk]

Thanks Tsuji,
but I have checked that one too, it is the server and has shares with the drive and other computers. Another anomoly is that I can save from a another networked computer to the server that will not allow any saves....it has me baffled.

 

[Dreamboat]

Is your drive mapping set up correctly? I don't know how to change this myself, but I've heard it creates this problem. If you're able to save files to the hard drive without problem, it is definitely not an application issue, but a network issue.

http://www.PiersonTech.com

dreamboat@nni.com
Brainbench MVP for Microsoft Word

 

[gchurchwell]

I have a user with almost the same problem. It occurs only in Word 2000 in this case, but the error message is the same, indicating that the filename is invalid.
The user is able to right-click in a folder and choose create Word document.
If he opens an existing Word document and saves, this works okay as well. However, if her tries Save As... to change the name or location of the file, the error returns. Office has been reinstalled with no change.

 

[Dreamboat]

gchurch: If you did not use Eraser after uninstall first, then you didn't do a *proper* reinstall.

However, this might help:

Close Word.
Start-Run and type regedit.
Go to this folder:
hkey_current_user\software\microsoft\office\9.0\word

Right-click and rename the Word file to OldWord.

Then, rename the normal.dot file on her drive (probably), and launch Word and try it again. If it doesn't work, better check her write rights...

http://www.PiersonTech.com

dreamboat@nni.com
Brainbench MVP for Microsoft Word

 

[doldol]

I agree with dreamboat's solution. I had an user just 2 days ago, in excel, can open in opened Excel but, can't open the document by double-clicking. and the error was similar, "Cannot find the file c:\...\.... Make sure the path and filename are correct and that all requred libraries are available."

Try the registry edition and PLEASE let us know if it worked. Then it can be a good KnowledgeBase. But, somehow, i think the HD is very unstable condition. becoz, not only one app, but a few. Recommend scan HD or Rebuid in a new HD after solving the issue.

 

[gchurchwell]

Registry edit didn't work for me. I am not sure what using Eraser means, and I doubt the user does either, so that was not done.

 

[Dreamboat]

Excel only: Tools-Options, General tab. Make sure that "ignore other apps" is NOT checked.

Also, go to WORKING PC Windows Explorer menu, Tools-Folder options, click on file types, scroll to MS Excel worksheet (XLS), hit modify, click bolded Open and then modify. Make sure hers is same, i.e., mine says:

Application used to perform action:
"c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\EXCEL.EXE" /e

Use DDE is checked and says:
[open("%1&quot]

Hope this helps.

http://www.PiersonTech.com

dreamboat@nni.com
Brainbench MVP for Microsoft Word

 

[gchurchwell]

The same user who was having only the Word problem, is now having an Excel problem. The Excel problem is different than the Word one however. Whenever he tries to save a new file in Excel, it gets named the same as the folder it is being saved in, regardless of what he calls it.
If he saves the file abc.xls in the folder c:\data for instance, the filename becomes 'data'

 

[MISAdmin]

I could be totally off base on this one, but I expereinced a similar problem not to long ago at two different client sites. Both Clients were running Norton Anti-Virus. (Although, a co-worker saw the same thing happen with a client running McAfee.) Basically, the Anti-Virus Client was keeping Word from saving the document. Upgrading the Virus Client Software solved the problem.

Heres what was happening, which is easy to verify by going and looking at the folder you are saving to... When you open a Word Document, it renames the document you opened and gives it a temp extension... It then deletes the original file. When you go to save the file, it renames the document back to the original file name again. In the problem I saw, you could go to the "My Documents" folder (since thats where the client was saving their data) and see that both a *.TMP file and the original file existed in the directory. If we deleted (or moved) the file with the original file name and left the .TMP file there, then switched back to Word, it would save with no problems...

As I said, we isolated this to be casued by the anti-virus client and upgraded to the latest client version to make the problem go away.

Another easy way to test this was to simply disable the anti-virus client, then go into Word and try to modify and save a document... It always worked with the Virus Client disabled...

 

[gchurchwell]

Eraser has been tried, but to no avail. Apparently Eraser is not what it is cracked up to be since the user's personal information still exists when reinstalling Office. The problem has also spread to his PowerPoint, with this error: You don't have permissions necessary to perform the operation. To get correct permissions, see your system administrator.
First, he IS the system administrator.
He is on Windows 2000 and has Administrator rights on the PC. Always has had, this has not changed.
We do not use Norton OR McAfee.

 

[MiggyD]

MS needs to fix this and fast. This morning a secretary (hooked up on Win2k and Word2k) had saved a file and couldn't find it on her computer.

I used explorer and clicked on MY Documents but the only thing there was My Pictures. I manually looked in a variety of folders and still couldn't find it.

I finally used START>SEARCH and located the file. It was stored in a path I had manually looked at however, it was setup as though it was a PROFILE in the regular windows 9X (you know...person's name/recent/desktop/etc...) so I hadn't looked any further.

It ended up something like this:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\My Documents\SomeFile.doc

Do you believe this path?!? I was in awe.

The worst part about it is that under TOOLS>OPTIONS>PATHS (in the default paths), it indicated the correct path to that file (only after it was opened up) and it changed as I trans the file to A: .

And just before leaving work, another secretary called me in reference to Excel books missing--same thing. Like I said, MS needs to move it and fix this soon. It is so annoying.

--MiggyD
It's better to have two heads to solve a problem from different angles than to have tunnel vision to a dead end.

 

[MISAdmin]

GChurchwell,
I don't doubt you, just looking for more info... That error message is the exact message I was getting with the problem I had with the Virus Scanner. You say you are not running Norton or McAfee, are you running ANY anti-virus client on that workstation? What types of applications are launching on startup? Boot into Windows holding down the shift key to load windows without loading any startup and TSR items and try it again.

MiggyD,
I'm not sure your talking about the same problem... W2K creates profiles for each user that logs in and the path you mentioned is the default path for each profile...

 

[axsys]

Recently I defragmented my hard drive and re-installed Windows 98SE on my existing installation to fix broken dlls etc. Windows works fine but my Office 2000 installation is giving the exact same problem as reported by Nigeldk. I have uninstalled Office and re-installed Office a few times and still the problem persists. One other oddity is that, since this happened, I cannot save anything to my hard disk from the network as it seems that I have no permissions, although I know that I have. This leads me to believe that something with File system permissions has gone wrong and that Office is not able to save anything to the file system, although I can do anything from the file explorer window. As I said everything was working fine until I defraged and re-installed Windows. I would appreciate any help.

 

[Guest_imported]

Definitive Answer!

I have had exactly the same problem and it had been bugging me for weeks, until I checked out registry explorer's web site. I have it installed and it has a Knowledge Base article on how it conflicts with Win98SE and Office 2000.
It can be found at

http://www.regxplor.com/support/Q011201.shtml

I have since removed it and Office 2k now works fine!

Regards
Tim Howard

 

[gchurchwell]

Hey PassinThru!

You were right! Definite Answer. This was exactly what was causing our user's problem. He had Registry Explorer installed. Once he removed it, the Office problems went away! Thanks!

 

[Calli]

I have the same problem in Excel with some users but with windows 98. I went and looked for the registry windows program but can't seem to find it. Any suggestions as to where exactly on C:\ drive that I can look at?