Word file keeps growing in size

A friend of mine who's a professional writer/published author is using MS Word 2003 to work on a novel. She began having a problem with her novel text file in Word when just opening it to read it. When she closes the file, after having made no changes in it whatsoever -- no edited text, no formatting changes, nothing -- a dialogue pops up asking "Do you wish to save changes?"

I took a look at it and thought that perhaps some kind of macro had gotten activated (though she doesn't use macros) so I found a Word tool to scan the doc for macros and it showed no macros associated with the problem file.

My friend has Norton AV and updates her virus signatures several times a month and several recent scans of the problem file with NAV showed no viruses in the file (or elsewhere on her system after a full scan).

I cut and pasted the text into a brand new file and all seemed well for several days then it started happening again -- she gets that "Do you wish to save changes" dialogue when she's only opened the file to read some of it and done absolutely no editing. Scrolling/paging through the document quickly (it's over 200 pages long) reveals no apparent changes to either the text nor any changes in formatting.

Nevertheless comparing problem versions of the file (that display the "do you wish to save changes" dialogue when no changes have been made) with what appear to be earlier versions of the identical file (identical in the sense that the text is the same length and has the same formatting and is, to all appearances identical in every respect) that don't display that message (e.g. one I've cut and pasted into a new file) show that the problem file is considerably larger -- on the order of 100 Kbytes larger.

We can continue, each time the file starts "growing" again (and the "Do you wish to save changes?" dialogue begins appearing), to cut and paste into a new empty file apparently to stop, for awhile, the file mysteriously growing larger on it's own, even though she's changed nothing in the text or formatting, but it's a worrisome problem as we have no idea what's causing it and the stability/integrity/safety of a manuscript that is being prepared for publication is, of course, of great concern to her.

She does, of course, have hard copies of her work in various stages as well as backups burnt to CD-ROMs but we'd like to figure out what's causing the size of the file to increase even when she's added nothing to it herself nor made any formatting changes so we can get rid of the problem.

To be quite clear about the "Do you wish to save changes?" dialogue -- I've more than once opened the file in question (actually one of several such files of her work in various stages of progress) and then immediately closed it without so much as even scrolling down the page and the "Do you wish to save changes?" dialogue pops up!

I've used a tool I found in Word to scan for macros in the file and found none and several virus scans with Norton AV have found nothing awry -- neither scans of the particular file(s) in question nor full NAV system scans show any problems.

Her system is about one year old, a Dell Desktop with OEM install of Win XP and OEM install of MS Word among other software. Everything else on the system seems to be running fine and we are aware of no other problems. She seldom adds additional software to her computer and rarely downloads any programs from the internet and does not recall installing anything just prior to this problem appearing. She does use email but is very careful about not opening any email that she receives from anyone besides known sources. In addition to running NAV she also has ZoneAlarm running. Both programs load whenever the system is booted and are configured at moderate to high levels of security -- with automatic scans of all downloads and emails for instance.

I've searched the software forum here without finding any similar problem and read through many of the software thread listings here also without finding a description of this sort of problem with MS Word. In addition I searched and worked my way through some of MS's Word KnowledgeBase without finding any help for this problem and ditto with the FAQ on MS's site for Word.

Anyone ever seen this sort of problem or have some suggestions about figuring out what's going on and how to cure it?

Thanks for any suggestions about how to proceed.

I can post specific info about my friend's hardware if that would be helpful but don't have it at hand at the moment. But given that it seems to be confined to only her Word files and, indeed, only her files containing various versions of her manuscript in progress, it surely must be a software problem I'd think.

 

Hi Eez, Question: is the font size remaining constant? Sometimes my version of Word will for some reason change the font size of a document. That would make the file size grow, though I wouldn't think by a hundred KB. Also you might hit the paragraph marker key and see if the last page of the document is storing corrections (the usual reason for a printer to print a blank last page.) If it is then, when you are in "paragraph" mode, the storage will be apparent. You can remove the storage by backspacing until all the little backwards Ps are gone and you are on the correct last page. Just a thought.

 

maybe

she inadvertantly activated one of the automatic insert options in word. The date for example; this would make an automatic change. I once had this problem in a manuscript I was doing for my work and found that I had activated an automatic insert of the time and date. Just an idea... this would certainly cause this "problem" to happen each time it was closed and re-opened.

 

I think billH is bang on the money here, been having same problem round here recently and just going over for a quick check to show that that is indeed why we get a blank page at the end. Not really noticing the file size, though, but i dont really monitor them very much.

 

I think you're wasting time checking for viruses and macro probs. I work with Word professionally, and this sounds for all the world like a bad setting inadvertently made.

First, I'd open the file in Word, then under File in the menu bar, click Versions, and make sure that Automatically save a version on close is UNchecked.

Under Tools, be sure that Track Changes if OFF (the TRK in the status bar is greyed).

Then open the Options panels, and go through and check for these:
General tab: Update automatic links UNchecked
Edit tab: Prompt to update UNchekd
Save tab: Always create backup copy UNchekd
Allow fast saves UNUNUNUNUNchekd (this !$&#@%! messes everything up!)
Allow background saves Chekd (yes)
Save autorecover info Chekd and set to 5 or 10, not shorter (yes)
Security tab: Remove personal ifo UNchekd.

That shd all take about a minute. Then try closing Word, re-opening it, then opening the troublesome doc, doing nothing to it, and then closing that doc.

If that doesn't cure the problem, my second guess would be a corrupted Normal.dot, and the cure for that is to make a copy of Normal.dot somewhere else, then delete the original with Word closed entirely, then re-open Word, so that it will generate a new Normal.dot, ... and see.

Best I can do for now. Let us know, please.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I thought that perhaps there might be some something turned on or set in Word inadvertently that could be at the root of the problem. I rarely use Word myself though -- WordPad generally measures up to my word processing needs.

No time tonight to check out your suggestions but I'll run through them tomorrow and let you know what happens.

Thanks very much for your help!

 

And thanks to you for the compliments. Was afraid maybe my detailed description and some of the repetition was overkill but more information is generally better than less in my experience -- especially when it comes to computer problems!

Will report tomorrow on whether I've had any success with the Case of the Mysteriously Mutating File(s)! *L*

 

Font size has remained constant throughout and no "extra" last page I think, but will double-check that.

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

But would that cause a file to increase an extra 100 Kbytes or so? Will check out that date thing and look for other automatic changes also.

Thanks for the response!

 

Right -- that is what we've done several times, but eventually the damn symptoms re-appear....the "Do you wish to save changes?" dialogue when no changes were made (by my friend or I at least) and the later versions of the file that are apparently the same exact text being 100Kbytes or so larger than earlier verions. I will check into the "Auto" settings as another responder suggested. I appreciate the info from the Mac forum and will look into that possibility also.

Thanks!

 

Thanks to everyone who responded so quickly!

I appreciate all the helpful suggestions and information. Will check out all the possibilities tomorrow and report back here.

Great site here! I used it many months ago and also tried to help out then by responding to pleas for help when I could.

Great to be back and participating again. Read quite a few posts on the various boards in the past few days and learned a great deal.

Kudos to the people who manage and run this site and everyone here trying to help each other with their computer problems!

 

YOU need to stick around! What robo said!!

Come hang with us in the Lounge, too! But not too much, otherwise we'll corrupt you over there, just like your Word document gets corrupted!!

Hope you get the problem sorted, and please report back so we can learn and know for future reference.

Eric

 

Wiz hit it on the head. Word has a built in hidden text 'feature' that stores different versions of edited (including deleted) text in the same file.

It caused a bit of a scandal last year when people found out that deleted text is still saved in the file and can be extracted with a simple save as.

Follow Wiz's instructions and copy/paste the text into a new document. This should reduce the file size and keep it that way.

 

Actually, I don't think it needs to be that complicated! Try saving the document in Rich Text Format (.rtf), and then open the RTF and save it back to a Word Document. RTF preserves most formatting, but should drop all that extra stuff making the file grow to stupid porportions.

 

Expanding doc

When you get it sorted, I agree with Robo, save it as chapters, or Chapters1-4, 5-8, etc.
Better than having all your eggs in one file.

 

Expanding doc

Sorry, that should have been Halo. My apols, Halo

 

If you open a file, then change your settings to New Versions (under File) and Allow Fast Saves (in the Options panels), then save it, play with it, and then save it again, I'll bet you get the same behavior. Allow Fast Saves alone can make a file's size increase geometrically in no time. I've seen four-page text-only docs weigh in at 65 MB with Allow Fast Saves set.

I'm thinking we shd see what Eezak has to say before we explore possibilities any further. I'm betting heavily on those two settings.

None of the "save the file (various ways)" suggestions could possibly be right, because the problem autostarts again. That means a switch or a program fault. The main template, a corrupt file, or a bad switch setting.

Let's hope he comes back with a report.

 

We have noticed that sometimes her document does have an "extra" (blank) last page and when we cut and past the text into a new file that apparently blank last page no longer appears at the end of the file. So we do think that is what's causing the "do you wish to save changes?" dialogue to appear. What we're wondering now is whether we can turn that feature off.

However, it seems clear now that nothing malicious is operating which was her main concern and she does, of course, continue backing up her work at frequent intervals (and more than one backup -- using floppies, CD's and one of those USB port keychain type devices (this particular one is the Lexar Jump Drive 256 Megs). As the file sizes are only around 500 K currently the file size per se isn't a problem.

What most disturbed my girlfriend was that she had been using word for some months without seeing the "Do you wish to save changes?" dialogue (hereinafter forevermore to be referred to as dywtsc dialogue! -- if I remember) when she merely opened the file without changing any formatting or doing any text editing and then one day that dialogue started appearing.

Will continue to see if we can turn off whatever feature it is that's writing to that blank page at the end...but I'm wondering....could it be that it's something that activates automatically when the file exceeds a certain size?

Thanks again to you and to everyone here who responded with info and information!

 

As I mentioned before -- I have myself opened one of the "growing files" in question and immediately closed it without so much as even clicking inside the file and without using either the scroll bars or cursor keys to scroll down at all -- simply opened one of the "mysteriously growing files" and closed it immediately and had the "Do you wish to save changes?" dialogue pop up. The size of the files isn't really a consideration as they're only around 500 Kbytes. It's the darn dialogue asking if we wish to save changes when we have no clue what changes have been made to the document as we haven't made any!

 

Eezak!!!!!!
You came back, but you didn't REPORT!!!!

We want to know whether you went through all of the settings and verified all of the positions of switches I and others recommended: ESPECIALLY the Versions switch and the Allow Fast Saves switch !!!

INFORMATION, PLEASE, my friend!

 

Yes, yes, I will report once I have some new info -- whether success or failure! But I've been busy for several days now rounding up some parts to build a new system and solving a couple of other problems and a trip to the dentist to finish up a root canal to boot. But I'll be working through all the suggestions here again over the next two days and I WILL report back on the results.

 

Nothing new

Wanted to let you all know I haven't forgotten this thread. But I still have no new info. We've been busy with several other projects -- built a new system from scratch (some old parts and some new) and my g'friend was very interested in the entire process. Had a problem with the ATI graphics card driver installation but that's all cleared up now and everything is running fine on the new system. And then we've been cleaning out spyware on several systems, trying out additonal RAM on her system (swapping in some from one of mine) to see if it's worth the cost to add and on and on!

I have printed out all the suggestions and ideas everyone's contributed here and we will try them out and see if anything helps. If it does (or once we've tried everything suggested here) I will report back and let you all know what's what.

Now I have something important to do -- get dressed and eat breakfast!

 

Hardly worth posting this now given how old this thread is and the "shotgun" approach we took to solving the problem, but I feel a bit guilty that I never posted again on this thread I started.

As I said, we took a "shotgun" approach to the problem -- worked our way through virtually all the suggestions made here (except for the "cut and paste the text into a new document" one because we were already doing that). But, unfortunately, we didn't just make the changes one at a time and then check the problematic file. We opened up with all barrels, full bore and when we were finished and checked the file after implementing all the suggestions...the cancerous file was cured!

Not a very informative way to troubleshoot a problem, but my girlfriend's main concern was to stop the infernal growth as soon as possible. Even though she had multiple backups on different media it was really worrying her.

So the upshot is that while we did finally manage to solve the problem we can't say exactly which of the fine suggestions you all made actually was the cure.

Sorry!

 

Just another thought to add to all the above. I have a splendid little program called Docscrubber. It was freeware when I got it. But if you open a .doc file from any source with docscrubber it will show you every piece of info about that file i.e. who originated it and all the times it has been edited. When you tell docscrub to kill all that unwitting spyware then the file dramatically reduces! This in no way detracts from the advice above - it's just another trick to know about Word because all those edits etc seriously fatten a .doc file. You'll need to google for the file because I have no record of where I got it. May even have been this site. If not found get back to me and I will try to establish it's originator.
Cheers All
Robert

 

Here You Go for Docscrubber
Robert

 

Robert, thanks for the headsup re: docscrubber. Looks like a handy utility so I did download it. Thanks again!