Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2024 May 26

= May 26 =

Word Autorecovery
I am using Windows 11, and Word for Microsoft 365. My question has to do with the feature to Save Autorecovery information, which saves a copy of each Word document that is open and has been modified within the past 10 (or other user-settable time) minutes. These Autorecovery files are saved in Appdata \ Roaming \ Microsoft \ Word. However, if I look at them as I am editing various Word documents, sometimes I notice that some of them have sizes of 0 KB. I am attaching a screen shot showing a view of the Word folder with four documents having sizes of 0 KB. These files are in fact null files; that is, the 0 KB is correct. The files that I was editing were not null files. What causes Word to stop creating good Autorecovery files? What I have found I can do is to stop Word (after saving the documents in question to their disk locations), and restart Word. If there is an unexpected stop or unexpected loss of Word functionality, updates to the documents being edited are lost. Is there technical documentation of the Autorecovery feature? Does anyone know what causes these failures, or how to minimize their occurrence? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:36, 26 May 2024 (UTC)


 * What follows is a hunch, although based on Microsoft sources. Buried deep in the menus of office is a way to change the autosave location. Perhaps this will solve the problem. I base that on hints in this otherwise irrelevant page . It has the phrase "the roaming profile has reached its maximum storage limit". What is the Roaming directory? It seems to be to do with making user data accessible across a network. Maybe avoiding the "roaming" will also avoid the zero bytes file issue.  Card Zero  (talk) 08:24, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you, User:Card Zero. The sources that you have provided are very old, which I think you knew, but they do provide information for an educated guess, which is what you were trying to do.  You ask:  What is the Roaming directory?  That is displayed in the screen shot that occupies too much space just above this discussion.  It is a subdirectory of my User directory, and, as you imply, it has something to do with network access, but appears to be an old version of network access.  I have changed the directory in which the Autosave is being done,and will see if that accomplishes anything.  I think that we are both inferring that what was happening was that the Word subdirectory within the Roaming subdirectory had exceeded some size limit, which would be why the Autorecovery files were being zeroed.  You provided some useful information to guess at what to do.  Robert McClenon (talk) 16:38, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes. A couple of other completely different wild guesses, which I have no time right now to investigate, is that they are lock files (to do with exclusive access to a file in use) or placeholders (when there is no need for an autosave but it is somehow convenient to Word if it can find the appropriate autosave file anyway). Also I really ought to dig the previous similar discussion out of the archives, I forget how it concluded.
 * Update: I searched the archives, and it turns out I was thinking of the saga of normal.dotm, a different problem you had with Word, although similar in that you lost supposedly saved data after a crash (in that case, template settings). Card Zero  (talk) 20:23, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

"dracut"?
Where does the name of dracut (software) come from? --142.112.143.8 (talk) 04:38, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I found a Reddit thread with the answer. It's named after Dracut.  I once read a novel where the "no resemblance to actual people" disclaimer said that "the characters are placenamed"; apparently some software developers had the same idea. --142.112.143.8 (talk) 05:10, 26 May 2024 (UTC)