Word is not saving changes to documents

Hi Marcel,

We've been experiencing similar problems this summer. Students have been coming into the library at the university where I work and editing their dissertations, returning the following day and finding all changes have been rolled back.

We assumed this was a USB issue as these are the cases that have been reported to us, but you example is so close to ours but on a hard drive that I'm inclined to think that it may be more widespread than first thought.

In a nutshell, this is our experience:

• User creates a document, saves it
• User works on document (often at a later date)
• User says they do regular saves
• User exits with save
• User goes to edit document later (same machine or different), all changes rolled back

I'm very experienced recovering lost documents and have found no file fragments or autorecovery files. We enable autorecovery every 10 minutes as well as the 'make a backup copy if user exits without saving' option. I've checked the file locations and there's no files there. I've tested the functionality and both are working fine.

What is interesting (and may be of some help to you) is I ran a data recovery tool on the USBs and found copies of the modified file that have been deleted. I.e., if the user worked on the file from 12:00 to 16:00 and hit Ctrl-S every hour after adding a page we found a deleted copy at 13:00 with +1 page, 14:00 with +2, etc., yet Word seemed to revert all changes back to the original on exit.

I suspect a couple of things: first, Word 'manage versions' is rolling back randomly. I don't know why. Second, users automatically connect to OneDrive (although they rarely use it) and although the files are not stored there, I wonder if one of the synchronisation settings is causing it to roll back. 

I've had no solution to this and can find no information online. It's a critical issue that will massive problems if it's repeated when the students return. I've had four cases in the last month and suspect there were more earlier that were misdiagnosed but we've only had up to 30 or so students using the library during the summer break. In 2 weeks users return and we'd expect traffic of upwards of 2,000 per day. And if we're experiencing this problem then our sister campuses (8 more - we support 3 universities) will be experiencing exactly the same as their setup mirrors ours closely.

Here's the thread I started. If you get any solutions, workarounds or clues to the issue I'd be obliged if you could post them: Lost changes to documents after saving

* Edit - quick query Marcel. When you say you saved your document on your laptop over a period, did you fully close the document each time or did you save it then 'shut the lid'? I only ask because I wondered if the Word session remained open the whole time or it was several sessions.

Hello Melsss,

We would like to know more about your concern regarding the files you're trying to save. Kindly answer the questions below:

• When did the issue start?
• Have you made any changes or installed any updates prior to the issue?
• Are you experiencing the issue with other Office applications?
• What is the version of Office are you using?
• Are you saving the edited files to an external drive?

Hi Marielle

Thanks for your reply. I only want to know how this is possible. The document was stored correctly on my laptop. The full 50 pages. I opened en closed it several times succesfully. Only when I send the file to my e-mailadress it contained only 12 pages. And when I moved it to my usb-drive it also contained 12 pages. Where did my laptop store these pages then???

I also am having the same problem. I am a microsoft certified professional, and I use word for work. 

IT's terribly costly and has caused me to send out reports that are missing data to my clients.

As you can see, microsoft does not seem to know, or care. Typical.

I recommend saving your document as an adobe pdf as soon as it is finished. That will lock in the changes you have made.

I know it's a clunky work around, but hopefully someone at MS will wake up and figure it out in the meantime.

Hi Marcel,

We've been experiencing similar problems this summer. Students have been coming into the library at the university where I work and editing their dissertations, returning the following day and finding all changes have been rolled back.

We assumed this was a USB issue as these are the cases that have been reported to us, but you example is so close to ours but on a hard drive that I'm inclined to think that it may be more widespread than first thought.

In a nutshell, this is our experience:

• User creates a document, saves it
• User works on document (often at a later date)
• User says they do regular saves
• User exits with save
• User goes to edit document later (same machine or different), all changes rolled back

I'm very experienced recovering lost documents and have found no file fragments or autorecovery files. We enable autorecovery every 10 minutes as well as the 'make a backup copy if user exits without saving' option. I've checked the file locations and there's no files there. I've tested the functionality and both are working fine.

What is interesting (and may be of some help to you) is I ran a data recovery tool on the USBs and found copies of the modified file that have been deleted. I.e., if the user worked on the file from 12:00 to 16:00 and hit Ctrl-S every hour after adding a page we found a deleted copy at 13:00 with +1 page, 14:00 with +2, etc., yet Word seemed to revert all changes back to the original on exit.

I suspect a couple of things: first, Word 'manage versions' is rolling back randomly. I don't know why. Second, users automatically connect to OneDrive (although they rarely use it) and although the files are not stored there, I wonder if one of the synchronisation settings is causing it to roll back. 

I've had no solution to this and can find no information online. It's a critical issue that will massive problems if it's repeated when the students return. I've had four cases in the last month and suspect there were more earlier that were misdiagnosed but we've only had up to 30 or so students using the library during the summer break. In 2 weeks users return and we'd expect traffic of upwards of 2,000 per day. And if we're experiencing this problem then our sister campuses (8 more - we support 3 universities) will be experiencing exactly the same as their setup mirrors ours closely.

Here's the thread I started. If you get any solutions, workarounds or clues to the issue I'd be obliged if you could post them: Lost changes to documents after saving

* Edit - quick query Marcel. When you say you saved your document on your laptop over a period, did you fully close the document each time or did you save it then 'shut the lid'? I only ask because I wondered if the Word session remained open the whole time or it was several sessions.

I had exactly the same problem. Office did not save the changes I made to my document, despite saving and closing it like I usually do. I just lost a lot of work! I think it has to do online updating of the document, Onedrive does not update the online copy of document and when you open the document, it is the online version that is opened (given preference over the local copy), this results to changes made to the local copy being reverted and are lost in the process. This OneDrive feature is terrible!!!!