Microsoft Acknowledges 'Save As' Bug in Word 97

Microsoft Acknowledges 'Save As' Bug in Word 97

This question was answered on June 15, 1999. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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MICROSOFT HAS acknowledged a serious bug in Word 97 for Windows (aka Word 8.0) which can cause data loss when users attempt to use the Save As command According to Microsoft, there is a bug in two files (WINWORD.EXE and WWINTL32.DLL) which causes Word to look for a drawing object whenever the Save As command is used If a drawing object is not found in the document, then Word doesn't close the document correctly before saving it with a different name

In a network environment, users may get an error like: "[original document] is being used by another user: do you want to make a copy?" (Where [original document] is the name of the file that the user is trying to save with the Save As command.) This error may occur even though the original user does NOT actually have the document open any longer Worst of all, if you are using a document management system like PCDocs, "you may experience data loss in the original document," according to Microsoft

Microsoft has updated the WINWORD.EXE and WWINTL32.DLL files to fix the problem, but it has not finished regression testing the fix If you must have a fix for this problem right now, contact Microsoft Technical Support at (425) 462-9673 and request the files associated with Knowledge Base article Q179435 Microsoft Technical Support will provide you with a file called ODMAUPD.EXE with contains the updated versions of WINWORD.EXE (5,199 Kb, dated 1/14/98) and WWINTL32.DLL (1,131 Kb; dated 1/14/98)

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Posted by Ken Colburn of Data Doctors on June 15, 1999

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