Microsoft has acted very quickly to resolve one of the latest problems that had occurred in the Windows environment. This had been especially serious, since it had affected a considerable number of users and, in addition, had quite drastic implications. Luckily, the solution has already been published and the community can breathe easy.
A few days ago, an error in Windows was going around the world that was causing the Word program to delete the files you had created. And the worst thing is that it happened when you tried to put them away. You clicked save or save how and then the program deleted them. Imagine what happened to you with an endless document, a class assignment, or some type of important work file.
What was happening?
Although at first there was a bit of chaos and a lot of nerves about what was happening, now we know what was happening and where the fault was. With the relevant explanations from Microsoft, we also understand the reason why the disappearance of the files was not happening to everyone.
What happened is that the Word file was deleted if one of two possible situations occurred. The first was for us to try to save the document in an extension that was in uppercase. For example, .RTF files or DOCX files. In that type of case, the document was deleted without a trace. The second circumstance was that the file name included the pound symbol, the classic #. Although it may not be the most used symbol in document names, there are surely people who have used it and encountered the problem.
There is already a solution
As we said, Microsoft has acted quickly. The company has highlighted several things. To begin with, it has been confirmed that the problem was only being experienced by users who had version 2409 of Word for Microsoft 365, exactly in build number 18025.20104. In any case, it does not seem that the number of people with this specific version was small. In addition, Microsoft also comments that it occurred when closing Word after having made the relevant edit and saved. Therefore, if we left the program open, the files were still on the hard drive. But if we closed it, the folder in which it was located was deleted.
Of course, there is no need to make light of the problem, since it is a serious error and something that may have caused many users to lose important documents. Now Microsoft confirms that they have issued an update that will mean that everyone who was exposed to the bug will no longer have to worry. Of course, to avoid more problems and clear up doubts, the company recommends that we close all Office applications and restart them on all our devices. And even then, it is recommended that you first do a test with a test file to check that it is not going to disappear when you try to save it.
If there is still someone who is affected by the problem even after restarting the apps, what Microsoft recommends is to resort to alternative solutions. First, they say that it would be wise to look at the recycle bin in case files have appeared there. We could also email the documents to each other before closing the program, at which point they would disappear. And ultimately, it is recommended to roll back to a previous version of the program from Command Prompt. This may be more annoying, but it could be your last option. To do this, in the CMD window, enter the following code:
cd %programfiles%Common FilesMicrosoft SharedClickToRun
officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=17928.20156
This should ensure that you no longer suffer this error, although everything has possibly been fixed automatically thanks to the latest update distributed by Microsoft. The bad news about all this is remembering how, in recent months, other similar incidents have already occurred with Microsoft technology and the Windows environment. It seems that, lately, users of the veteran operating system cannot rest assured.
