'Word could not create the work file. Check the temp environment variable.' What is the simplest way to resolve this please!

Anonymous

When I open Word I get this message every time: 'Word could not create the work file. Check the temp environment variable.' Word then crashes very often without autosaving.

I've found many people asking this question but I utterly do not understand the answers people have given them! Is there a simple way to resolve this - I know literally nothing about computers! Please help with the easiest solution possible.

Many thanks!

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Answer accepted by question author

Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K MVP Volunteer Moderator

When I open Word I get this message every time: 'Word could not create the work file. Check the temp environment variable.' Word then crashes very often without autosaving.

I've found many people asking this question but I utterly do not understand the answers people have given them! Is there a simple way to resolve this - I know literally nothing about computers! Please help with the easiest solution possible.

Many thanks!

The error message "Word could not create the work file. Check the temp environment variable". Can be caused by incorrect registry values in the key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\User Shell Folders.

Click Start and in the start search field, type

Regedit

and press enter.

In the registry editor, browse to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\User Shell Folders

On the right hand pane, check the value data for Cache.

It has to be %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files.

If it is different, double click on Cache and type:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files

under value data and click ok. Close the registry and restart the computer and check if it works.

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80 additional answers

Anonymous

2013-07-16T20:26:18+00:00

Yeah - thanks Doug replying a while back. I forgot to thank you. Word does try to create a temporary file to represent the document being previewed, so I would imagine your solution would work, though I did not try it. Thanks for being so active and helping people. We appreciate it...

Brian
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Anonymous

2013-07-16T16:01:08+00:00

You are the best. It took care of my problem. THANK YOU.
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Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2013-07-03T23:58:44+00:00

No, it is not the code behind the button on the web page. It is a problem with the Microsoft Word document preview facility that, while Microsoft have been aware of it for many, many months, they have not yet come up with a fix for the problem. I guess it may be an issue of just which group in Microsoft is responsible for it. Word can preview Excel files and Excel can Preview Word files, but Word files cannot be previewed in Word and Excel files cannot be previewed in Excel.

If you turn off the Preview Pane in Windows explorer by clicking on the "Hide the preview pane" button to the left of the Help question mark, you should then be able to select and upload a Word document
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Anonymous

2013-07-03T13:00:51+00:00

I see this same error on various job/career sites when clicking a button on the page that allows the user to use the generic open/save dialog in the browser to create a pointer to a Word document in preparation for upload. My guess is that the code behind the HTML button (script) is faulty in some way. Regardless, the error is classically obtuse and does not help the user understand whatsoever what possible actions they can start taking to remedy it. I get around it by saving my resume as PDF in Word and then uploading those, but hey - is this the desired outcome?
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