Two documents under the same file name?

[rozzy]

Hello all,

I desperately need your help! I am studying with the open university and submitted my EMA using microsoft word 2007. I get the results and they say certain aspects of my essay are missing. Eventually they send me the file they received, which is nothing like what I thought I had submitted. It was a draft. So they are different word counts, pages, file size - the only thing that is correct is the actual file name!

I don't know how this happened, so I was wondering if two files or versions can be submitted but under the same name? If so, wouldn't they have received both versions? It does not make sense to me, I was so careful, i had saved the file, come out of it, then uploaded it. I still managed to pass, but the grade is not what I should of received which is so depressing as they are refusing to do anything about it. I am going to write to complaints, but i need to have more of an understanding about what I did wrong...

Thank you for your help

Rozzy

[fumei]

Did you ever - EVER - open the file as an attachment? I mean open it from the email, not saving it to disk and then opening it from the hard drive? If you did, that would probably be the cause. Do not ever open a document directly from the email.

[rozzy]

Yes I did, as I was working from two different computers. What does that do? That didn't even cross my mind that one!

[fumei]

When you OPEN a document directly from an email from an email, a TEMPORARY file with that name is created. If you work on it and then save it, you are saving THAT file. There is now a difference between the file that is attached and the file you worked on.

When you are done, the temp file you worked on AND SAVED, is deleted (sometimes, sometimes not).

This is not new. Microsoft has warned against this (and still does) for years and there must be hundreds of threads like this, on forums like this, going back more than 10 years. You can try searching for numerous threads with extensive details on how you may - repeat MAY - be able to get the other file. It is iffy.

Now you know. NEVER open a document directly from email. Always save it to disk first, then open it.

BTW, ditto for working directly (opening and saving) with files on a USB stick. Do not do it.

[rozzy]

Gosh you learn something new every day! I won't be doing that one again! Thank you do much for explaining it to me, has helped a lot. Much appreciated

[macropod]

Another way of creating 'duplicate' files is to save them with different extensions - the doc, docx and docm formats are all native to Word and you can have files with the same names but with the different extensions sitting alongside each other.