Cannot delete temporary MS Office files - Access denied

Hi,

Since moving to an XP machine, I have experienced problems with temporary
Word and Excel files. Both Word and Excel seem to be creating temporary
versions of the file being edited however they are not cleaned up when the
file is closed nor when the application is closed. I also cannot manually
delete these files unless I reboot the machine. I get "Access Denied"...
filename. "Make sure disk is not full or write-protected and that the file
is not currently in use."

As this happens very frequently, it is quite annoying. The associated
application is closed and I can find no way of discovering what application
has the file(s) locked.

There are related side effects as well.

For example, in Word, I will be editing a file, click on SAVE and it will
tell me that it cannot save the file. When this happens, it seems that the
orignal filename has now been replaced with a temporary filename (e.g.
~WRL3889). If I use SaveAs, I can save it under something like the old name
but different.

In Excel, it creates multiple temp files like: "filename.xls~RF1be5a3c.TMP".
While it has not failed to save the file, it creates one of these files
virtually every time I hit SAVE. Again, these temp files cannot be removed
until after I reboot. If I edit personal.xls, I end up with a bunch of
these files in the XLSTART directory and it tries to load all of them on
next boot of Excel.

I also have strange things happening in Word that may or may not be related:
1) Menu's appear spontaneously when switching back to Word from another
application. They don't go away when I click on another menu item.
2) When scrolling through the document and I happen to land on a picture
or hyperlink, the FILE menu gets selected and I cannot continue scrolling
until I click in the document area.

I am running XP Home (OEM) with SP1, with MS-Office XP Small Business (SP2).
I am not using NTFS.

I have tried everything I can think of (including reinstalling Office,
rolling XP back to pre-SP1) short of reinstalling XP. I have been through
most of the posts that deal with the "Unable to delete" problem but the only
suggestions I can find are removing "read-only" status or flushing the
clipboard and these don't work in this case.

I scan for viruses regularly using both Norton and AVG and have found
nothing.

At thsi point I'm not sure if this is a Windows XP problem or strictly an
Office XP problem. I'm getting ready to remove Office XP and install Office
2000 to at least localize the problem to the Office Suite or the O/S.

If anyone can offer any insight, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm at the
end of my rope!

Thanks,
Frank

Norton is one part of your problem.

Turn off real time scanning of Office type files


"fbognar" <fbognar88@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:uHi0le7TDHA.2316@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...

> Hi,
>
> Since moving to an XP machine, I have experienced problems with temporary
> Word and Excel files. Both Word and Excel seem to be creating temporary
> versions of the file being edited however they are not cleaned up when the
> file is closed nor when the application is closed. I also cannot manually
> delete these files unless I reboot the machine. I get "Access Denied"...
> filename. "Make sure disk is not full or write-protected and that the file
> is not currently in use."
>
> As this happens very frequently, it is quite annoying. The associated
> application is closed and I can find no way of discovering what application
> has the file(s) locked.
>
> There are related side effects as well.
>
> For example, in Word, I will be editing a file, click on SAVE and it will
> tell me that it cannot save the file. When this happens, it seems that the
> orignal filename has now been replaced with a temporary filename (e.g.
> ~WRL3889). If I use SaveAs, I can save it under something like the old name
> but different.
>
> In Excel, it creates multiple temp files like: "filename.xls~RF1be5a3c.TMP".
> While it has not failed to save the file, it creates one of these files
> virtually every time I hit SAVE. Again, these temp files cannot be removed
> until after I reboot. If I edit personal.xls, I end up with a bunch of
> these files in the XLSTART directory and it tries to load all of them on
> next boot of Excel.
>
> I also have strange things happening in Word that may or may not be related:
> 1) Menu's appear spontaneously when switching back to Word from another
> application. They don't go away when I click on another menu item.
> 2) When scrolling through the document and I happen to land on a picture
> or hyperlink, the FILE menu gets selected and I cannot continue scrolling
> until I click in the document area.
>
> I am running XP Home (OEM) with SP1, with MS-Office XP Small Business (SP2).
> I am not using NTFS.
>
> I have tried everything I can think of (including reinstalling Office,
> rolling XP back to pre-SP1) short of reinstalling XP. I have been through
> most of the posts that deal with the "Unable to delete" problem but the only
> suggestions I can find are removing "read-only" status or flushing the
> clipboard and these don't work in this case.
>
> I scan for viruses regularly using both Norton and AVG and have found
> nothing.
>
> At thsi point I'm not sure if this is a Windows XP problem or strictly an
> Office XP problem. I'm getting ready to remove Office XP and install Office
> 2000 to at least localize the problem to the Office Suite or the O/S.
>
> If anyone can offer any insight, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm at the
> end of my rope!
>
> Thanks,
> Frank
>
>