Hot Take A bug in Word deletes documents instead of saving them

[silversurfer]

If you use Word to write your documents, beware of a very odd bug that can ruin your day by deleting a file instead of saving it. Microsoft has issued a warning, acknowledging that Word documents with certain file names might be lost upon saving locally.

If you save files on your local machine, you better pay attention to their file extensions. Microsoft says that if a file has its extension capitalized (.DOCX instead of .docx) or with the symbol # in it, an attempt to save when closing the file will result in Windows just deleting the file. Neowin managed to recreate this bug, as it seems to be affecting all users with Office apps version 2409

Fortunately, the damage is not permanent, and you can restore the deleted file from the Recycle Bin. Alternatively, Microsoft suggests saving the file manually before closing the document or Word altogether. There is also another workaround:

Enable the option “Don’t show the Backstage when opening or saving files with keyboard shortcuts”

• This can be enabled by going to File > Options > Save > Don’t show the Backstage when opening or saving files with keyboard shortcuts.

Microsoft says its Office team is investigating the issue. Meanwhile, users can use workarounds listed in the official documentation.

A bug in Word deletes documents instead of saving them

Microsoft has warned users that a very odd bug in Word can delete a document instead of properly saving it.

www.neowin.net

 

[bazang]

Now this is serious @oldschool . There ain't nothin' like ah person a writin' their PhD dissertation in Word, ah savin' it, and it done gone.

More important than any clickbait ragebait security news, that's ah for sure.

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Microsoft fixes Word bug that deleted documents when saving

Microsoft has fixed a known issue that was causing Word to delete some Windows users' documents instead of saving them.

On affected systems, locally saved files were deleted after saving because of this Word bug issue if their filenames included the # symbol or had a capitalized filename extension, such as .DOCX or .RTF.

This only impacted users of Word for Microsoft 365 version 2409, build 18025.20104, only when they closed Word after editing and saved their documents when prompted to do so. After saving changes to their documents this way, the files would disappear from their original location.

Redmond confirmed the issue last week following widespread user reports that Microsoft Word was deleting some of their saved files.

In a Tuesday update to the support page acknowledging the saving problems, the company said the bug has now been fixed with a service change, which rolled out to all affected customers.

To get the fix, Microsoft recommends restarting all Office apps on affected devices and opening Word again.

"If you're still seeing the issue, please close all open Office apps and re-open Word to ensure the change has been picked up," it said.

Microsoft fixes Word bug that deleted documents when saving

Microsoft has fixed a known issue that was causing Word to delete some Windows users' documents instead of saving them.

www.bleepingcomputer.com