Word documents are linked together.

[jeannot]

Hi,

one of our secretaries has this problem :
she uses a document as a kind of template, so she opens it, and then saves it under another name, and so on.
The problem is that all documents created this way are kind of linked together, so that if you modify one of them, they are all modified. If you copy one documents without the source document, Word would refuse to open it.
The resulting document is also smaller then the source one, so that it seems obvious that most of the data is kept in this source doc, but we can't find out where this link has been defined.

Thank you for your help

 

[Dreamboat]

You said:

"The problem is that all documents created this way are kind of linked together, so that if you modify one of them, they are all modified"

1. How are they *linked* and how do you know that?

2. If you go to Tools-Templates and Addins, what is there? Is there a template BESIDES normal.dot attached to these files?

3. If she opens a DOCUMENT and saves it to a new name, she is not properly using a template...

4. What do you mean "Word would refuse to open it"? What is the error message? Anne Troy

http://www.TheOfficeExperts.com

 

[jeannot]

To be more explicit, I take an example.
you open document A, save it as document B , open again A and save it as C. So there are 3 same documents. When you now open B and modify it, you have the same modifications in the other 2 documents.
When you open B and C, and split screen, you then type something in one of them, you see the caracters appear in the other document as you type it ( A has the same modifs afterwards ).
When you save B to another place, you get 2 documents ( B and A ).
A has ~65k , B and C have ~19k, so it seems that the biggest part of the data is in A, that's why i say they are linked in same way I don't understand.
There is no other template.
I know, she is not using a template, but that's the way she works, and until now it worked fine.
I can't remember the exact words, but Word says it is not able to open the document, if you try to open B or C when A is not present. Tomorrow I can say more.

thanks for your help.

 

[Dreamboat]

Sounds suspiciously like:

1. The user is not saving it as a new document to a new name, but hitting NEW WINDOW instead.

2. The user is not saving as a new document, but is copying it and pasting it into a new document and choosing Paste LINK instead of paste.

3. The document is majorly corrupt or there's a big problem between the chair and the keyboard (just a joke).


Anne Troy

http://www.TheOfficeExperts.com