Util to Force a Save in Word (from Software Finds)

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Frankly, it’s time for a “you are an idiot” discussion with the user.

In view of the users’ presumed general ignorance of computers, perhaps you can set his or her Tools, Options, Save Autorecover info to one minute, then set his or her normal.dot as read-only.

Not really what you are looking for, and retrieval is inconvenient, but its’ a quick solution! If this isn’t adequate, you may need to write some Document_Close() code for this user.

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Has anyone seen a utility that would make someone save a Word document upon exiting? I have a user at my office who consistently closes Word documents without saving them first. I’d like something that either saves the document for her, or that FORCES her to answer the saving question correctly when she closes the document. Thanks for your help.

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Maybe a bit of ‘OnApplicationClose’ code that would save all unsaved documents to their start-up folder.
The next time they opened Word, all these ‘unsaved’ documents would open up again.
And again.
A bit crude and nasty, but as John remarked, it’s time to be

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Thanks for the tip. I’ll try writing some code to either force a save or put the unsaved document into the startup folder. Do you know of any good reference books for writing code in Word? All of what I’ve been able to do so far has been by trial and error, and I’d like to have some clue as to what I’m doing before I start back at it again.

Thanks again.

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Well, even with code, you’re going to have to train your user on how to habitually open a template as opposed to a new document… if she can’t catch on to ‘Save’ (notice it’s ONE icon to click on in Word… AND it does prompt her before she closes everything.. unless she’s simply powering off, in which case you need to have an equipment preservation discussion…) I doubt she’ll be able to retain a new ‘template’ procedure…

If you don’t want to be just let her lose her work until her supervisor becomes aware of her lack of performance… I’m a firm believer in good service, but I think that crosses the line…

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I’ll just have to have another chat with her. She’s an attorney, so there’s no supervisor to complain to. At least I can tell her I looked into fixing her “problem.” I was just fooling around with the code, and I was having trouble making the macro run on all open documents. Thanks for explaining why.

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As she’s an Attorney, you’ll want to beef up her AutoRecovery Save frequency… if it’s draining her resources, as it well might, she may want to look at upgrading her computer.

There are backup programs out there that help preserve data, but they only work if the data is saved..

Good Luck!

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Just as a matter of interest, is her lack of saving causing her a problem, or others a problem?
i.e. – is she complaining to you about something that she isn’t doing?

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It’s causing her and her secretary a problem (the secretary is who gets to do all the unsaved work over again). She thinks it’s just happening, and she isn’t doing anything to cause the problem. There are other problems that she has with documents that are NOT her fault, so she thinks this problem is related. The only problem I have with that reasoning is that she’s the only one that has this problem consistently. But what do you do? I just try my best to bite my tongue and tell her that it might be the document’s fault.

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I’ve long practiced the art of shifting blame to inanimate objects.. Try something like:

“Well, for some reason, when you click on “Yes” to save, or the Save Icon, it’s not saving your data as it should. Given the data is as sensitive as it is, I’ve increased time time between ‘AutoSaves’, That should correct the problem. Is your mouse comfortable? It’s possible that the mouse isn’t registering a ‘click’ when you choose Save…”

This reiterates the correct action, “When YOU click on Save.. It’s not..” and gives her the option of exploring her work habits in connection to her problem.

Hope this helps!

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OK, It should be possible to create a macro on closing Word that will check the Saved status of all open docs and save them if they have not been saved.
You could possibly choose between saving them on the users machine, or saving them on the secretary’s.
I’m off for the day now but if no solution is posted by tomorrow, I’ll see what I can come up with.

BTW – I’ll put in a request to get this post moved to the Word forum – I think you should get a better response there.

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A lawyer in my very office today told me he/she received a document in e-mail edited, saved and closed it, but when Outlook asked whether to save changes, upon closing the message, he/she answered no. Whoops.

Perhaps if your attorney cannot save, she can at least run a document compare so her changes will be easy to re-enter.

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Now that you have explained that this user is an attorney, I can see that my suggestion of a “you are an idiot” discussion was useless. I now recommend that you unplug the computer and give this user several reams of yellow legal pads, and explain that these are the absolute latest Lawyer PDA technology.

There also seems to be an echo in here about Autrecover, but what the heck …

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This would be a classic case us techs like to call I.D. Ten T. DBA “Idiot.”

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Would you buy into a small macro that will save all “dirty” (changed since opening) documents when Word is closed by normal means?

Failing that, I have an EXCELLENT lawyer in Ottawa. You could take her to court …..

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Could you persuade her that it is necessary to press CTRL+S at the end of every sentence (or paragraph if you’re feeling less unkindly)?

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Sorry Chris, I know everyone has to make a buck but…

A macro to force a save would be put into the problem users Normal.dot and look something like this

Sub AutoClose()
On Error GoTo mStartUp
  If ActiveDocument.Saved = False Then
    ActiveDocument.Save
  End If
  Exit Sub
mStartUp:
  Dim sFileName As String, sSavePath As String
  If Application.StartupPath  "" Then
    sSavePath = Application.StartupPath & Application.PathSeparator
  End If
  sFileName = sSavePath & "File created " & Format(Now(), "ddMMyy-hhmmss") & ".doc"
  ActiveDocument.SaveAs sFileName
End Sub

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Ooops! I wasn’t meaning to LITERALLY make a buck. What part of my heritage is that from? Anglo, Aussie or NAmer? “To buy into something” meant to agree with it. Are you agreeable to …..

I am trying to get away from Auto macros, because I have a feeling that people are telling me that they are on the way out, and that Document Events are on the way in.

In a separate thread in VB/VBA I’m exploring the Application Quit event.

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Andrew, Thanks for the piece of code. It works like a charm!

Chris, if you’ve got something similar in the works, I’d love to see it.

Thanks again,
Becky Ewens

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