Re: MS Word outpaced by a snail

["H. Chou" <chou -at- NOTIS -dot- COM>]

svictor -at- lgc -dot- com wrote:
>>         I am trying to put together some manuals using Word 6.0. One manual
>> is about 360 pages and contains 240 screen dumps (TIFF format) and various
>> illustrations from Canvas. I followed Microsoft's advice and attempted to use
>> master documents. My machine crashed, strange temp files appeared, the master
>> document tool showed weird symptoms, the machine was outpaced by a snail
>> walking by (I have a pentium 90 with 16 meg), and the whole experience was
>> like rowing
>> an overloaded boat across the north sea, taking in water now and again
>> having to
>> to be very careful not to capsize. Not to mention the 'saves' - go to the
>> toilet, take
>> a walk around the building, drink two cups of coffee and come back.


i can certainly empathize (though with a measley 486DX/33 with only
8MB of memory, i'm worse off and victor should be feeling sorry for
me!). one thing i learned while creating a 260 pg. manual using the
master doc method is to backup like crazy. i am guessing that when
Word does that auto-save thing, it is saving changes to the .TMP
files that litter the hard drive, not the actual file. only when
you actively seelct Save from the File menu, are you saving to the
actual file.

also, i got the impression that when you actively save a .DOC file
that Word deletes the original and then saves the "new" .DOC in its
place (is this how all file saving works?).

anyway, when i tried to save the master document (it had 11 linked
documents) before i printed, i suddenly ran out of memory. Word
woudln't let me save anythign anywhere! i couldn't save to the
network. i couldn't save to the hard drive. and when i looked in
the File Manager to see the date and time of the last save for my
files, 3 .DOC files were gone! kaput! fortunately, i didn't do
anything major to those files since that morning when i zipped them
up. but jesus h., that was frightening. so, the only thing i could
do was click No when Word asked if i wanted to save my changes
sicne my PC would run out of memory when it would click Yes.

so, for those of us with the MS Word maladie, back up all yoru
stuff before doing a master doc print. and try not to work in the
master document too much.

h. chou
chou -at- notis -dot- com