When I try to either "save" or "save as" a Word Doc on my PC, a box pops up and says "the file you are merging into is currently in use. Please try again later."




I have never merged a document on this computer so I can't figure out how we got into this mode. All I want to do is to save or save as.


Thanks

I presume your file is saved to a shared drive repository and it is trying to reconcile the online version with the local/editable version.

Are you backing up to OneDrive?

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Thanks for the try, Guessed- appreciate the help - but no, I do not use a shared drive. This is just a simple save on the hard drive of my PC. I cannot even save it to a flash drive - or any location on my computer, no matter which location I try. I couldn't even save it as a different type of file (PDF plain text etc).

I do not use, nor do I want to use, One Drive - I use Carbonite. But that only backs up once a day.

I did a workaround by copying the file in its folder, and then closing Word (not trying to save). Word, as usual, asked if I wanted to save changes and I hit "yes." So then I had the old file ("copy") and the edited one, which I then renamed upon opening word again.

But I did not want to keep doing that every time I wanted to save - which is every 15 mins or so for this manuscript. However, much to my surprise, something happened internally with Word and I was then able to save the MS the next time.

Yet - I just don't want this to happen again, and certainly don't want to go through those many steps each time I try to save a document. So... does anyone know why this occurred?

Thanks for the suggestions.

Intermittent problems are always tough to diagnose.


Next time, try starting Word in safe mode and see if that helps. If it does, write back here and someone will walk you through what to do.

Open Office apps in safe mode on a Windows PC - Microsoft Office
Repair an Office application - Office Support

Thanks. However, I was able to "fix" it by just shutting and reopening Word. I still have absolutely no idea however why the "merge" mode began. Guess I never will. It's just darned annoying that something as random as that would happen. I had done nothing different.

Appreciate both of you for the attempts to help though. "When in doubt, reboot" always seems to work.

Words that have offered a sense of comfort in trying times:

I guess that's a feature, not a bug. Thanks Charles (and Bob). I'm good to go now.