How is my dad duplicating MS Word files ... over and over and over

August 9, 2021 6:41 PM

My dad is 84 years old. He has a Macbook Pro. He writes on MS Word. We'll establish a document that he's working on, put it on the desktop, give it a unique name that he recognizes... and literally 24 hours later there will be five copies of it on the desktop. This has been happening for years. He has, probably, 400 copies of this book project that he's working on. My siblings and I cannot figure out how he's doing this.

My siblings and I are at the end of our ropes so I'm reaching out to this community on the off chance that someone has a fresh idea. I can confirm that this is actually happening, but I can't imagine how.

We've asked him to show us how he opens the document. He double clicks it.
We've asked him to show us how he saves the document. He hits Command-S

We've watched him type. We've watched him open and close and save. It NEVER happens when we're watching. Then within a day he'll say "I have five copies of this document. Which one was I supposed to use again?" We'll look at the screen and, sure enough, there are five copies sitting there.

How on earth is this happening?
Is there an Auto Save in Word that would actually create a new copy?
Is there a way he's doing a Save As without even knowing how to do a Save As?
Is there a process of investigation that you would propose to crack this?

He claims that he'll go to the bathroom and when he comes back there's a copy. He has also claimed that "everytime I close the lid, when I open it there's a copy"
Both of those things are impossible, right?

Is there anything in the defaults or preferences that could cause this to happen?
This feels like a magic trick to us. Like... how is this happening?

posted by crapples to Computers & Internet (18 answers total)

What are the names of the new files? That might give a clue about where they are coming from.
posted by bethnull at 6:55 PM on August 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

This sounds like a bug I've run into (I didn't have the exact same issue as described here, but pretty close):
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/problems-with-save-feature-on-word-for-mac/49c6dc83-ee5f-48ef-96ef-20c76e4e7382
posted by jonathanhughes at 6:56 PM on August 9, 2021

Any chance he’s hitting the option (or option+command) key while opening files/clicking around? That’s another way to create a copy (or an alias/shortcut) I could see someone doing accidentally - maybe resting their hand on a key without realizing they’re actually pressing it, especially on a low-profile MacBook keyboard.

Agreed that knowing how the copies are named would be a helpful clue to this mystery.
posted by moonbeam at 6:58 PM on August 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

I don't have an answer for this (yet) but here are some additional questions that can provide useful information:

How are the saved files named? Are they sequentially numbered, like
filename.doc, filename-1.doc, filename-2.doc...,
or are they datestamped, like
filename(06-02-2021, 13:12:25).doc, filename(06-02-2021, 13:13:12).doc, filename(06-02-2021, 13:32:38).doc...,
or something else (eg, filename-copy.doc, or filename.doc001)?

Are they all appearing in the same folders, or in random places?

If they're datestamped, are there regular intervals between the dates? Do the creation dates correspond to when he puts the computer to sleep or wakes it up, launches Word or quits it?
posted by ardgedee at 7:00 PM on August 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

This doesn’t sound like it would be the issue, but just to chase down every possible lead—is it possible that he’s saving his documents as Word templates (.dotx instead of .docx)? If that were the case, every time he would open the file, it would create a new copy. (Again, seems unlikely based on your description, but just in case.)
posted by ejs at 7:07 PM on August 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

Shift-cmd-S is "save as," so it wouldn't be too hard to accidentally "save as" rather than "save," but then he'd be aware of renaming the file, I'd think...
posted by praemunire at 7:16 PM on August 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

My money is on: he opens the file, minimizes the window it's opened in, and to get back to it opens the file again. Then, eventually, when he gets around to quitting Word, just accepts the default suggestions "this file is already being used, save it as something else (y/n) and now has however many copies on his desktop that he'd opened.

When you're watching him do it, he is _only doing that one thing_, so of course he's not distracted and not minimizing windows to multitask.
posted by mhoye at 7:46 PM on August 9, 2021 [13 favorites]

My money is on: he opens the file, minimizes the window it's opened in, and to get back to it opens the file again.

This can not be it. At least in the Mac version of Word, if you minimize a document, and then double-click its icon again, it will just un-minimize the copy you have open. There is no way to have two copies of the same document open simultaneously. You'd need to copy it first.
posted by primethyme at 8:19 PM on August 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Looking in the Save settings in my copy of Word on Mac, there is a setting for "Always create a backup copy." I barely ever use Word, and I don't have that setting on, so I don't know exactly what it does. I would imagine that it creates a single backup copy, not infinite ones. But maybe if it creates a backup copy, then he opens that one, and it creates a backup copy of that? My gut feeling is that it is not this setting, but it's the only possibility I see in the settings.
posted by primethyme at 8:22 PM on August 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I will look at the names of the files asap. That's a great idea. I will also look at whether they are dotx or docx files. I like the link about that temporary file bug from jonathanhughes. We can check that out. Tomorrow I can check out ardgedee's questions. I don't think it's a shift-cmd-S issue. We thought of that don't see evidence that he's doing that.

Thank you so much - we'll do some further investigating and see if we can figure it out. I'll report back in case anyone is interested.
posted by crapples at 8:57 PM on August 9, 2021 [5 favorites]

Yes please do report back! I have nothing helpful to offer, but now I'm very curious.
posted by DTMFA at 9:08 PM on August 9, 2021 [8 favorites]

Could it be that when he's double-clicking, he's sometimes moving the mouse by accident, which the computer takes to be click-dragging, thus copying the file?
posted by vincebowdren at 4:37 AM on August 10, 2021 [4 favorites]

The only time I can remember getting unwanted copes is if I am holding down ctrl and clicking on multiple files to make a back up and then before I've finished marking all the ones I want somehow a bunch of copies appear in the same folder without me intentionally doing anything. I guess I must be doing something in terms clicking in the wrong place but not sure what.
posted by biffa at 10:13 AM on August 10, 2021

Not a direct answer, but since he is working on a book, I hope these are getting backed up to the cloud or another location. If not set up some sort of a backup, or have him use an online platform that you have access to. So you can download periodic backups.
posted by WizKid at 10:15 AM on August 10, 2021 [4 favorites]

If a file is selected on the desktop, pressing Command+D will duplicate it. Would be possible to open a file, focus back on the desktop, and press cmd+D a couple times instead of cmd+S.
posted by TurnKey at 10:53 AM on August 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Well, we did some digging. The duplicate files are always the same filename with numbers after:
File1
File2
File3

Doing some talking and digging we THINK he's clicking CMD-D on the desktop, which immediately makes a copy. We went into the settings and reassigned Duplicate to a random, harder, key combination (shift-cmd-r). Now cmd-D doesn't work anymore.

We're going to wait a day and see if he gets more duplicates.

Thanks for the ideas. I hope this was it!
posted by crapples at 9:38 PM on August 10, 2021 [11 favorites]

Some versions of Windows will save every file after hes opened them to create a restore point. if he adds text to the document it changes its file size so it's essentially a new time stamp on which to back up the computer in case it glitches and you need to restore.
posted by The_imp_inimpossible at 1:56 AM on August 11, 2021

Note that if he were accidentally duplicating the files via command-D, the file names would come out:

File
File copy
File copy 2
File copy 3
posted by ejs at 12:06 PM on August 11, 2021