How do you explain

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ant
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A

Ant

Hello.

How do you tell computer illterates/newbies that you can't edit file
attachments (e.g., Word documents) from e-mails that are temporary
files. Ugh, he doesn't understand that Open and Save options are two
different things. Basically, he opened a Word document via email, made
changes, and saved it. He closed Word, and then that file go "poof"! I
cannot recover that file either. How can I explain this is normal?

Also, he got confused with those temporary files ~<filename>... He
thinks that is not how it works.

Is there a Web site to show in basic and non-computer language on how
this works? Thank you in advance.
--
"Don't be no Ant-Man. An Ant-Man has very low horizons." --unknown
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Ant said:
How do you tell computer illterates/newbies that you can't
edit file attachments (e.g., Word documents) from e-mails
that are temporary files. Ugh, he doesn't understand that
Open and Save options are two different things. Basically,
he opened a Word document via email, made changes, and
saved it. He closed Word, and then that file go "poof"! I
cannot recover that file either. How can I explain this is
normal?
Click to expand...

If he did actually save the document, it will have gone to
the cache and will be in one of the folders below this path:

c:\Documents and Settings\{user.name}\Local
Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\
 
If he did actually save the document, it will have gone to the cache and
will be in one of the folders below this path:

c:\Documents and Settings\{user.name}\Local Settings\Temporary Internet
Files\Content.IE5\
Click to expand...

Not after he closes Word and his IE6.0 SP2. :(
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/ /\ /\ \ Phillip (Ant) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
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Ant said:
Not after he closes Word and his IE6.0 SP2. :(
Click to expand...

Yes, so it seems. I never noticed that before. Thanks for
pointing it out.

Well, hopefully the experience was painful enough for the
user that he won't do it again.
 
Hello.

How do you tell computer illterates/newbies that you can't edit file
attachments (e.g., Word documents) from e-mails that are temporary
files. Ugh, he doesn't understand that Open and Save options are two
different things. Basically, he opened a Word document via email, made
changes, and saved it. He closed Word, and then that file go "poof"! I
cannot recover that file either. How can I explain this is normal?

Also, he got confused with those temporary files ~<filename>... He
thinks that is not how it works.

Is there a Web site to show in basic and non-computer language on how
this works? Thank you in advance.
Click to expand...

Ant, if the .doc file shows as an icon in his email - have him drag and
drop that icon into a folder on his desktop or a subfolder within his My
Documents. That way there's no need to explain the "strange" interactions
between IE temp files and a program's temp files. Drag and drop should be
easy enough for any new user to accomplish. The results are a new physical
object in one of his folders -something else that's easy for a beginner to
understand.

Of course, it does leave you in the position where you'll need to explain
how to open, edit and save changes. And how to attach that newly edited
file to a reply email. But you didn't ask about that part. ;)
 
(posting from ie6.browser)

Ant said:
Hello.

How do you tell computer illterates/newbies that you can't edit file
attachments (e.g., Word documents) from e-mails that are temporary
files. Ugh, he doesn't understand that Open and Save options are two
different things. Basically, he opened a Word document via email, made
changes, and saved it. He closed Word, and then that file go "poof"! I
cannot recover that file either.
Click to expand...


You could if you have an undelete utility.

The problem is that OE creates a temporary file to decode the attachment
into and that filename is passed to Word. When the E-mail which causes
the file to be created is closed the file is deleted. Perhaps your user
would have had more luck with closing the E-mail *before* editing the copy
of the attachment that Word must make. E.g. what does Word do when
it discovers that the file it wants to resave has been deleted?--Recreate
the temporary file to be left as an orphan in the TIF? Etc.

I think that this question would be better addressed in a Word newsgroup.
(crossposting to one now.) E.g. why would Word permit saving into a known
temporary directory without at least a warning? Also, wouldn't Word (at least
for a while) have an undo file to help the user recover at least partially after
this clear user error? The problem is caused by a usability defect in Word
IMO but it is the user's responsibilty to be aware of it (Caveat emptor!)
Unfortunately I don't know if this issue is documented anywhere formally.


HTH

Robert Aldwinckle
---
 
Email files are not temporary files. MS Word attachments - or any other
attachments - are not temporary files. If he (The Ant?) received an
attachment, opened it in Word, edited and saved it, the modified file should
be somewhere on the harddrive - right where He saved it. Preferably, He
should have saved "as" another filename.doc. Some protection software (AVs)
quarantine attachments in a special folder, OE might have compressed it -
and some of it is lost, though.
Michael
 
I've long wondered why MS doesn't have the additional option of saving that
LAST document we were working on before we exited with a too-hasty "don't
save."

It's nice to have automatic saves done so that we don't lose all from power
outages, etc. But over-hasty exiting is a known user failing and easily
remediable by keeping just one more file on a disk that already has
thousands of files on it already.

Or heck, track the 20 last documents worked on.

Richard
 
Phillips said:
Email files are not temporary files. MS Word attachments - or any
other attachments - are not temporary files. If he (The Ant?)
received an attachment, opened it in Word, edited and saved it, the
modified file should be somewhere on the harddrive - right where He
saved it. Preferably, He should have saved "as" another filename.doc.
Some protection software (AVs) quarantine attachments in a special
folder, OE might have compressed it - and some of it is lost, though.
Michael
Click to expand...

OE never compresses attachments. Never.

--
Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE
Please respond in Newsgroup only. Do not send email
http://www.fjsmjs.com
Protect your PC
http://www.microsoft.com./athome/security/protect/default.aspx
http://defendingyourmachine.blogspot.com/
 
Tell people that for security reasons they must save the attachment to their
My Documents folder first and that they can then open it from there.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.
 
Phillips said:
Email files are not temporary files. MS Word attachments - or any other
attachments - are not temporary files.
Click to expand...


I described what OE does with attachments.
Are you telling us about a different mail reader's behaviour?

If he (The Ant?) received an
attachment, opened it in Word, edited and saved it, the modified file should
be somewhere on the harddrive - right where He saved it.
Click to expand...


Until it was deleted, yes. In the case of OE if the E-mail which caused
that attachment to be decoded is closed *after* the modified attachment
is saved it is deleted.
 
Email attachments ARE temporary files from OE's point of view, located in
the Temporary Internet Files folder while they're open. If modified and
saved, the modified version is saved back to that location. The file
remains after Word (or whatever application) is closed, and the changes
are visible in the attachment if it is reopened. However, once the
message is closed, OE deletes that temporary file and all changes are lost
because the message itself still contains the original, unaltered
attachment. This isn't Word's fault -- it has no way to know that OE
regards the file as temporary.

Outlook handles this better. If you modify an attahcment to a message in
Outlook, it will ask if you want to save changes when you close the
message. Replying Yes saves the modified copy of the attachment, along
with any changes made to the message itself.
 
Maybe Word could give a warning when you save in a temp folder?
And maybe somebody could suggest that in the beta for the next version?

Regards,
Klaus
 
How is Word supposed to recognize that a folder is a temp folder? The
only thing special about temp folders is how they're managed. While there
are certain default names and locations for temp folders, they can be
changed and may be different on different Windows versions.
 
How is Word supposed to recognize that a folder is a temp folder?


Hi Gary,

As long as it's all MS infrastructure (Word, Outlook, OE, Windows,
especially if Word is used as the mail editor for Outlook/OE), why shouldn't
that be possible?

Klaus
 
As long as it's all MS infrastructure (Word, Outlook, OE, Windows,
especially if Word is used as the mail editor for Outlook/OE), why shouldn't
that be possible?
Click to expand...

There's nothing at all special about a temp folder. A folder is a folder.
The temp folder is a temp folder precisely because OE is using it that
way. It stores the file there for Word to access and then deletes the
file when it decides that you're done with it. THe folder could have any
name and be located anywhere in the file system. Word has no way to know
what's going on. It just does what it's told.
 
Email attachments ARE temporary files from OE's point of view, located in
the Temporary Internet Files folder while they're open. If modified and
saved, the modified version is saved back to that location. The file
remains after Word (or whatever application) is closed, and the changes
are visible in the attachment if it is reopened. However, once the
message is closed, OE deletes that temporary file and all changes are lost
because the message itself still contains the original, unaltered
attachment. This isn't Word's fault -- it has no way to know that OE
regards the file as temporary.

Outlook handles this better. If you modify an attahcment to a message in
Outlook, it will ask if you want to save changes when you close the
message. Replying Yes saves the modified copy of the attachment, along
with any changes made to the message itself.
Click to expand...

One difference between regular old folder and a temp folder that I can
think of - The temp folder is a variable defined in the system's path
statement.

Regardless of why the system or a program do things in a certain way, if
you always do A and get B as a result but want C as a result, then you have
to change A. There's no setting in OE to cover the described situation so
the user has to take specific steps to insure the attachment is saved in a
location that is not temporary.
 
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