Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ns-mx!cadfx.ccad.uiowa.edu!emcguire
From: emcguire@cadfx.ccad.uiowa.edu (Ed McGuire)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: files not getting closed
Message-ID: <2132@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
Date: 15 Aug 90 19:26:33 GMT
Sender: news@ns-mx.uiowa.edu
Reply-To: emcguire@cadfx.ccad.uiowa.edu (Ed McGuire)
Organization: CAD-Research, U of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
Lines: 39

Our secretaries are pulling their hair out.  They are revising an MS
Word document, passing revised copies between their hard drives via
diskette.  Three times within the last week, they have lost changes
made in the document.

They claim that when they copy the newest edition from one disk to
another--replacing an obsolete edition on the target disk--the obsolete
edition hangs around.  When they open the new document on the target
disk, sometimes the obsolete edition is gotten in the editor, even
though the last modified date was changed on the desktop.  This happens
infrequently enough and the editions are similar enough that they have
made corrections to the obsolete edition instead of the new edition
without realizing it, and propagated the changed file to everybody
else.  Thus the earlier corrections are lost.

I've not been able to reproduce the problem, but I did see something
very suspicious when they showed it to me.  Two editions of the file
were on a diskette.  Neither was open in Word, but Word was memory
resident (they use Multifinder).  One could not be thrown away ("locked
or in use").  The other was supposed to be the newest edition--and the
modified date reflected that--but, when opened in Word, the text
displayed was clearly obsolete (or so they told me).  When I Quit from
Word I was able to throw away the one, and when I reloaded Word and
opened the other, suddenly the text displayed was current.

I called Microsoft.  I was advised by the guy I spoke to that he had
seen similar behavior before under numerous applications.  The scenario
he described was:  with Multifinder running, close a file that you
opened in an application.  Then immediately switch to finder.
Sometimes you get "locked or in use" if you try to throw it away.
Evidently the desktop is not getting updated immediately.  An
inconsistency in the desktop might explain why I could get a "deleted"
obsolete version of a file too.

Can anybody shed more light on this problem, before our secretaries go
bald?  I'd be more than grateful!
---
peace.  -- Ed
"Come in, God."  (Navy Seals)