Word is not saving changes to documents

I am experiencing the same problem.

For the first time in weeks I shut down word last night and everything was fine.

This morning I open a new document and get started and when I go to save it it won't save.  Not in .docx or in .doc.

It WILL save documents previously saved, but only if I haven't added anything.

As far as I know I have not installed any updates, although this sounds a lot like the problems people have been having after your last update (which you suspended, if I remember correctly, because documents were being DELETED/UNRECOVERABLE).

I am using MS Office 365.

I don't use the other applications in the suite so I wouldn't know if they were wonky or not.

No I am not saving my documents to an external drive.   Not as far as I know at least.

It should be saving to C drive.

HOWEVER:

Local Disk C --> Program Files (x86) --> Microsoft Office

Is EMPTY

Local Disk C --> Program Files --> Microsoft Office 16

is also EMPTY

This PC --> Documents is still there but, again, I can't save anything.

To say that I am less than happy is rather understating the case, I think.

That's interesting. It sort of tallies with our thoughts that the session is being rolled back rather than not saving.

As I noted, we have 3 different institutions based here and they all have slightly different policies and options in place for OneDrive - mainly access options - but we've experienced issues with all three so we kinda thought it might be some generic OneDrive issue. I don't know the exact trail of events but we started to experience the issue at the start of summer and it's usual for changes to be implemented in the Summer when we're at our quietest. This would include making any changes to profiles, OneDrive implementation, etc.

Some of the students save to OneDrive by default and share work with others but the majority don't touch OneDrive at all. Since users are opening, saving then closing documents entirely held on USB then cloud settings shouldn't come into play at all, but we know how Word functions and never had an issue before so we're reluctant to put the blame there. We also know what patches have been applied to o/s and package and there's nothing dangerous that we can see so we're largely ruling that out. OneDrive is maintained at the other end so we don't know what changes have been made/applied and the symptoms seem to correspond partly with known behaviour so we're very, very wary about it.

My personal experience with OneDrive is not good. It's the best of the cloud packages that I evaluated, but it only works when you do a full sync. I tried to do drag and drop uploads and it reported all well, but when I checked the total directory sizes it only uploaded between 15 and 20% despite several retries.

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!!!!

And yes, I fully closed the document every time. I'm old fashioned. I closed the document (and all other programms running) and closed the laptop.

Thanks for your mail. I appreciate it.

I've tried to fix it the way you discribed, but it did not work. I think the data are overwritten already.

I just have to accept it, i guess...

Marcel