Word Error

[MichaelCullen]

Hi

we are having problems with Word 97 were it keeps reporting that a document is in use by another user even though it isn't

is there a way around this?

thanks

Michael

 

[cmpgeek]

is it possible that the person listed as using it had it open and ran into some trouble with it and did a Ctrl/Alt/Del to shut it?

i have seen it alot on my PC before - where it will tell me that I already have it open and edits are in progress. the only way i have been able to "make" word see that the file really is not open, is to shutdown the PC for a minute... then restart and go back and try to open the file again...

luckily for me that has always fixed the problems around here - i hope it works for you... good luck

 

[RichAtAPS]

You may have a problem with your normal.dot (or another template file). When the normal gets corrupted word often hangs when closing. Even though the executable (winword.exe) ends, Word cannot write back to the .dot file and ends up leaving the temp file open.

Look in your template directory, usually

c:\documents and settings\%username%\application data\microsoft\templates

I'm sorry...I'm having a brain fart and can't remember where it is in Windows 98 and 95, but you can just do a search for normal.dot and look in that directory.

Make sure Word is closed and see if there are any temp (twiddle) files left. They usually look like this ~$Normal.dot. If there are, delete them. Also, see if there are temp files in the network directory where you store your documents. If so, delete any that are not currently open.

This should clear it up. If the problem persists, the normal.dot is likely corrupt and needs to be deleted.