Saved word documents opening blank. 0kb

[profit10]

Hi,

 

At first I thought this was just down to the students not saving properly (and it may still be) but it is happening quite often lately.

 

Basically, a student will save a word document and the next time they open it, it will be blank. The file size will be 0kb and the last modified date will be the same as the first created.

 

Are there any reasons why this might happen?

 

Any input would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[Davit2005]

Can you check the details tab of the document i.e. Content Created & Date last saved.

 

I would try and get the staff member too check that these students are not doing anything strange when closing the document in the lesson i.e. saving the document when they start and then closing Word without saving again. Get the staff member to note what machines these students are logged into and test your self as that student.

 

It's always easy for people to blame technology and not read the any messages or confirmation boxes that appear.

 

I don't know what your user base is like but maybe worth checking the basics as this is an intermitent issue by the sound of it but could just be effecting one PC.

[GeekyPete]

What Version of office are you using? Are the files all .docx? Do you have any examples of .doc files doing the same or .xlsx files in excel for that matter. Are there any auto recover files in the folder?

 

Also where are the files being saved to? Try saving them to local, mapped drives and cloud storage to see if it made a difference. Are there any auto recover files in the folder?

 

 

Sounds like one of two things to me, it could be an auto recover problem where it's getting confused with which file it's saving. Or if it's all .docx file you might have something blocking xml. check your AV, firewall, filtering etc depending on where you are saving to.

[profit10]

We are using 2013 so all files are .docx. I've had one student reporting and excel file.

 

There doesn't appear to be any auto recovery files.

 

We are saving to mapped drives.

 

I've had a look and can't see anything that's blocking xml.

 

If it is an autorecover problem, can anything be done about this?

 

Thanks.

[spadam]

My guess is that they're creating the new file in Windows Explorer, renaming and then opening it and then not saving their changes when exiting.

[Oaktech]

I've seen something very similar with a failing disk, not saying it is, but it's certainly something to investigate - maybe run an error check just to be on the safe side.

[mb2k01]

Check the NTFS permissions on the source folder. My guess is that the user doesn't have modify permissions.

They probably have read and write which allows them to save the initial file, but after Word creates the initial file it doesn't have the access to modify it!

(We actually run our shared areas this way to educate users to save an original copy of their work to their personal documents before copying to shared areas)

[LiamH]

Do the students tend to come to your office when this happens?

 

We used to have students deliberately deleting their own work to get out of lesson to "go see the technician" ended up running some folder monitoring software on my machine that showed them doing it before the teacher would accept that it wasn't a computer fault.

 

If its repeat offenders try monitor their user area for a few days/weeks and it might give you a better idea.