why,when closing a word file......

[Mattk]

...does it always say 'do you want to save changes?' when you havent made any ? ive tried saving anyway but the next time u open it u get the same options.

just curious !

[Pinotage]

I get that message constantly and its very confusing

[fo3nix]

if you make no changes at all, and just scroll up and down, it shouldn't ask you. if it does, it's microsoft's poor programming.

however, if you do even the slightest thing to it, such as do a word count, it'll ask you.

[Mattk]

most often i open the doc just to print then close it again.it contains no changeable data ie a date yet when i go to close it asks if i want to save changes !

[Ralph]

"Last Print Date" is a value saved within a Word document, so if you open & print it, that value changes and the file needs to be saved again. This explains one specific case, but I suspect fo3nix's suggestion is fairly close to the truth.

[fo3nix]

this is due to how office progams save your file.

you are aware that when you have a document open on your computer, that it is saved in your computer's memory (RAM). Well when you save that document, all Word does is grab all the raw data that's in memory for that document, and place it in a file with a few extras, on your hard drive.

so when you open that file, it grabs the data it's told to in your file, and puts it back into memory. when you go and print that document, then the data in the RAM has changed slightly, as it's been told to print. when you go to close the document, Word compares the data in RAM to the data in the original file. it's changed (it thinks), so it asks you what it asks. it doesn't actually compare sentance for sentance, so it doesn't know that the actual content of the document hasn't changed.

this technique is sometihng that was started in the early 90s. in the forthcoming version of office (specifically, excel, word and powerpoint so far), the files are going to be saved in XML. thus it'll save the content itself, so this issue may be resolved. (this is one of many, many advantages).