Word starts deleting my document one letter at a time. Nothing will stop it.

Were you ever able to find a solution for this problem?  This has now happened on three different laptops with Word 2013(part of Office 365)

Well, there are many suggestions for troubleshooting in this thread. What have you tried so far?

The continuing lack of a true "autosave" feature is one of my pet peeves about Office / Word (it comes just after "the ribbon" ).

There are a couple of ways to add an autosave feature that uses SAVE AS to create multiple backup generations of your file.  If you do it as a timed save during editing, like autorecover, can create a LOT of extra copies if you don't do periodic "housecleaning".

True Autosave Macros for Office - File History

This file you are working on is HIGH VALUE (to you). You MUST take extra steps to protect the time and creativity you have invested in this file. You MUST make frequent backups.

A good general rule for backups is:

Remember 3-2-1 to have good backups --

o at least 3 copies of any file,

o at least 2 different storage mediums (say on a hard drive, thumb drive, DVD or the cloud),

o at least 1 copy offsite -- in case of fire etc!  (ie thumb drive moved to a different building)

Steve Gibson

PS: yes “correct” the plural of medium is media, but I don’t speak latin! <grin>

You can do your backups manually or make use of automated tools.  A strategy I have used is timed backups during the editing session (5 minute). Then the final end of day save is copied to second medium. I rotate the “second” medium with an Offsite copy.  Once a week I go in and clean up the 5 minute incremental backups to keep just the end of day copy (to free up space!)

I have used the “autohistory” tool at codeplex. It is easy to use, but like any automated process it uses up a lot of space.

Unfortunately, although Office apps have been around since the the mid 1980’s, MS has not figured out that we need a good “Autosave” backup feature. In the past there was a “versions” feature in some office apps, but it only kept incremental copies of files, not full files. Win7 has a file “versions” feature, but it is tied into “System Recovery Points”. Not very useful.  The following links tell how to setup macros that run automatically and use SAVEAS to save full copies of the file with the date/time included in the file name. You have to manually delete the “extra” backup files, but you control the process rather than Windows or Office. It is a bit more work, but I find it worth it for very important files that are changing frequently.

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Autohistory for Word 2007 / 2010, Excel 2010 (Version Control)

https://autohistory.codeplex.com/

Creates a Date&Timestamped copy of file every time you perform a normal Save. You can access any of the older versions. It creates a folder for each document affected. You have to the option of creating a single “universal” backup location.  The History is located in a NEW GROUP on the View Tab.

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Timed Automatic backup Word documents

http://www.gmayor.com/automatically\_backup.htm

Graham has created an addin that does something MS should have done 20+ years ago.

<snip>

Contrary to popular opinion, Word has no integral means of automatically saving the current document, nor of backing-up the current document. What it does have is an option to save AutoRecover information after a specific and configurable interval and an option to save a backup copy of the previously saved version of the document with the default file extension of WBK (and although there is no reason to do so, Word also allows the option to change this extension to the user’s choice). This is not a true backup in as much as it is not a copy of the current version of the document.

A function to create a true automatic backup is provided by the **Save In Two Places add-in which is detailed in a separate page**, There is also available from this web site a complementary add-in which provides numbered versions of a document. **Again that has its own web page.**

</snip>

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Save Dated & numbered Backup versions of a document - Word

http://www.gmayor.com/save\_numbered\_versions.htm

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Save Numbered Versions Add-In for Word 2007 & 2010

http://www.gmayor.com/SaveVersionsAdd-In.htm

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Save Numbered Backup Versions of Document

http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/SaveIncrementedFilename.htm

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Saving Everything Macros

http://word.tips.net/T001469\_Saving\_Everything.html

Summary: Need to force users to save their work? It may be as simple as implementing an AutoNew() to force every new file to have a filename, and an AutoClose() to save the current document BEFORE closing. It could, however, also have something to do with training users.

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Controlling Names of Backup Files

http://wordribbon.tips.net/T011760\_Controlling\_Names\_of\_Backup\_Files.html

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Save the current document in two locations add-in for Word 2007 & 2010

http://www.gmayor.com/SaveInTwoPlacesAddIn.htm

Performs a normal save in one location, then does a DOS copy to the second location (ie USB)

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Making Backups as You Work

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=731710&seqNum=5

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Win8 Tip: Enable File History

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-tip-enable-file-history-143579

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zApps-apps Collection for 2007/2010/2013 - 7 day free trial Word, Excel, PowerPoint

http://www.greatcirclelearning.com/software/zapps-apps/zapps-apps-collection

The zAPPs-apps Collection adds functionality to Microsoft Office Word, PowerPoint and Excel to automate common work tasks and automatically save local copies of your files. Your ability to reuse content is optimized, your ability to work with images is enhanced, and copies of your files are saved locally every time you save so that you can instantly go back to a usable copy if you have a crash or overwrite content you need. The zAPPs-apps Collection streamlines and accelerates your work process.

The Collection contains 16 tools that run in Excel, PowerPoint and Word to help you:

·      easily go back to prior versions of your files so that you can recover and reuse overwritten content

·      extract anything from a PPT file for use in a Word file

·      save embedded images for reuse as stand-alone image files

·      import multiple images at the same time

·      resize multiple images at the same time

·      extract multiple content items all at once

·      view all of the data about an open file in 1 dialog box, from 1 click

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Helping You Recover Your Work in Office 2010 – Autorecover

http://blogs.technet.com/b/office2010/archive/2009/09/22/helping-you-recover-your-work-in-office-2010.aspx

Have you ever closed Word after making a bunch of changes, and then accidently clicked ‘No’ when asked if you want to save your changes?  Then you suddenly realized what you have done, only to find that there was no way to recover your work?  You are not alone.  In fact, so many people were in similar situations that we improved Office 2010 so you can get that document back!  We call this feature Versions and I would like to spend a little time introducing it to you.

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Recovering More of Your Work with a Shorter AutoRecover Interval

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=731710

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Automatically Saving Your Work Frequently – Word and Excel

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=731710&seqNum=2

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Making Backups as You Work in Word 2007

http://www.msofficetuneup.com/2008/06/01/making-backups-as-you-work-in-word-2007/

Note: this site has been taken off line

Even if you’re using the macros earlier in the chapter to save your work frequently, you can still lose data if your hard drive crashes. So we’ve all learned from hard experience not only to save our work regularly, but also to make periodic backup copies. The macro I use most often in Word is one that does both in a single procedure! That is, the macro not only saves your work, but it also makes a backup copy on another drive, such as a removable disk, a second hard drive, or a network folder. Listing 1 shows the code.

Listing 1 A Procedure That Creates a Backup Copy of the Active Document on Another Drive

The backupFile and currFile variables are strings that store the full pathnames for the active document and the backup version of the document. Use the BACKUP_FOLDER constant to specify the folder in which you want the backup stored.

The procedures first check to see if the backup operation is necessary. In other words, if the document has no unsaved changes (the Saved property returns True) or if it’s a new, unsaved document (the Path property returns “”), bail out of the procedure (by running Exit Sub).

Otherwise, a new Bookmark object is created to save the current position in the document, screen updating is turned off, and the file is saved.

We’re now ready to perform the backup. First, the currFile variable is used to store the full pathname of the document, and the pathname of the backup file is built with the fol­lowing statement:

backupFile = BACKUP_FOLDER + .Name

This is used to save the file to the specified folder. The actual backup takes place via the SaveAs method, which saves the document to the path given by backupFile. From there, the procedure closes the backup file, reopens the original file, and uses the GoTo method to return to the original position within the document.

TIP

Using a Bookmarkobject to reset the insertion point is useful because it takes you back to the exact point in the document where you were before the backup started. However, you may be interested only in returning to the last position within the document where an edit occurred. If that’s the case, use the following statement in place of the Selection.GoTo statement:

Application.GoBack

Note, however, that there’s a bug in the GoBackmethod, whereby Word doesn’t save the last edit position (technically, it’s a hidden bookmark named \PrevSel1) in some cases. Specifically, when you exit Word, if you elect to save changes in the last document that gets closed, Word doesn’t save the last edit position in that document.

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=731710&seqNum=5

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Saving in Document Format from a Macro

http://word.tips.net/T000427\_Saving\_in\_Document\_Format\_from\_a\_Macro.html

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Use the Cloud

http://www.labnol.org/software/google-docs-with-microsoft-office/18815/

Although using the cloud does not inherently include timed backup, it does provide a useful backup function. Saving copies to the cloud eliminates the danger of losing your physical local copies, ie losing a HD or USB Thumb drive.

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A Real AutoSave

http://word.tips.net/T000157\_A\_Real\_AutoSave.html

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Did you read Rohn's response that was marked as an answer? Did you try the steps suggested?

This is almost certainly caused by some Add-In.

Add-Ins in Microsoft Word

I have the same problem.   Use of the backspace key or the Delete key to delete an area of text may randomly trigger a non-stop deletion character by character that cannot be halted by ESC or similar mechanisms.   Deletion is far faster if one has hit the Delete key and are moving forwards through the document.  Only using Task manager to close Word down stops the deletion.

Sadly Auto Recover is of no help.  Word saves the document as it is at the point of closure, and deletes all the previous auto recover versions.  (This is a major weakness in Word - the fact that it does not automatically back up at least 2 generations of auto recovery files and make them available.   Automatic recovery is also poor compared to Open Office and WordPro.)

The problem is clearly related to Word 2010 as I have tried replicate the problem with the same family of documents on other keyboards, Word 2003, Word 2007, not to mention WordPro and Open Office. 

The problem may lie in an interaction between some hidden character attributes and Word 2010.  (I've encountered issues in the past, as far back as 1995, where MS Office software behaves in a random fashion.  The only solution has been to delete that section of the document and recreate it from scratch.)  In this particular case, the documents where the problem occurs all go back to a common ancestor created in Office 2007.  If I could display the attribute bytes I suspect I would find a combination that triggers this behaviour.