Re: Word looks for another server on the network

In article <C1965A08.1E56E%henryn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, henryn
<henryn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Elliott Roper:

Thanks for your response:
<snip>
Question 1: What is Word looking for and why?
I *think* this is a long standing Mac annoyance, rather than Word
specific. It is looking for the most recently saved-to folder, which
is... (Oh dear!)

That's an interesting suggestion.

Question 2: How do I tell Word to look on the local machine or, at least,
not to look on that particular remote machine?
Next time that machine is up, so you can get out of the loop, create a
doc and save as.. to a local folder

That is a good theory, and I appreciate the help, but this measure had no
effect. I tried it several times. After doing this, the most recently-used
folder is demonstrably on this host, not the other.
Actually it was a crap theory. I should have tested it first. I did so
just now, and with the 'other' machine not mounted, Word saves to the
local document folder here.
(I have not tested this suggestion recently. I think OS X started
remembering different locations for open and save somewhere about 10.2)

It appears to me that Word requests something from the other host --more
about that in a moment-- and MacOS dutifully tries make the connection.

MacOS is quite competent at dealing with connecting to network resources
that may or may not be available. When the connection cannot be made after
a certain number of attempts, MacOS tells the user and presumably informs
Word. It appears that Word refuses to take "no" for an answer, and continues
asking to be connected to the other host, over and over, indefinitely.
Yeah well, for small values of competent. Don't you just love the way
Finder hangs about waiting for your .mac iDisk when you could not care
less about it, and all you did was try to scroll down past the little
sniveller?
Word should let the OS do its job, in this case to initiate a connection to
a remote server, and assume that the OS does the job properly --
specifically, if the connection can't be made, to accept the result and
provide a fall-back. (A perfectly good one is the Documents directory of the
current user. Isn't that the one that comes up first on a new Word
installation?) Word should not keep trying to get something that is not
available.
Yep. I agree, and on my testing just now, it fell back to ~/Documents
when it couldn't see the remote machine.

However, it was not completely perfect. Items on the recently used list
that referred to docs on the external machine returned "this document
template does not exist" if I dismounted and remounted the external
file system while Word was running. First of all they were ordinary
documents, and not templates, and secondly, since Word was smart enough
to list them when the external machine re-appeared, it should have been
smart enough to open them.

I was semi-pleased that Word did not display external docs in the
recently used list if the external machine was not mounted. I would
have been more happy if they remained but greyed out.

Now a bit more about the nature of the request... Even after saving
documents to multiple places on the current server according to your
suggestion, I note that Word seems quite confused about a "default"
location.

(I'm omitting a lot of details here, describing how I booted up and shut
down the remote server numerous times, ran various experiments with Word...
I'll be glad to supply these details if you want them.)


Following your example, I decided to find an existing email on the local
machine with a .doc attachment. Opening that should reset the default to
the current host, right? For good measure, I quit Word after seeing the
attachment open, and launched it again. No effect. I tried again, this
time saving the opened attachment to my home directory, again on the local
machine. Quit and re-launched. Word still insists on defaulting Open to the
remote host.

I was really referring to the current default for save rather than for
open. Perhaps I misread your problem statement?

Another theory: maybe Word is remembering that last folder from which a
file was recently opened, rather than to which a file was most recently
saved. Test this by diving into an existing directory on the local
machine, finding a valid file, and opening it. Then exiting Word and
re-launching. Aha, that seems to do it.
Try a save-as before exiting Word. I'm no longer confident that it will
help, but that should encourage Word to remember the local save
location with greater fondness.

Now, can I operate with the remote server powered down? Quit Word, take
down the remote server, re-launch Word... Nope, Word still is stuck in an
endless loop looking for the remote server.

One final check of preferences-->File Locations. Some are unspecified. None
mention the remote server.

So am I. I'll keep niggling at it. I have seen something similar in
other applications in the past, but I now forget how or even /if/ I
resolved it.

--
To de-mung my e-mail address:- fsnospam$elliott$$
PGP Fingerprint: 1A96 3CF7 637F 896B C810 E199 7E5C A9E4 8E59 E248
.

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