# Solved: Office 2003 creating/leaving tmp files behind.



## rvicker (Jan 16, 2004)

BASE:

WinXP SP2 and all current updates.
Office 2003 also with all current updates.
AVG also current.

When the user saves an Excel or Word file it creates another file in the same directory that starts with that files full name plus ~RF######.tmp, where # is some random digit mostly but occasionally letters.

Example:

ABC.xls
ABC.xls~RF98ce38.tmp

They say this just started a couple of weeks ago. So far the *.tmp files have been the same size as the real file. 

How do we prevent this so we don't have to keep manually deleting *.tmp files other than the usual %temp% directory ones?

Thanks.


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## Anne Troy (Feb 14, 1999)

Is the user OPENING the file from an attachment first?
And are you saying that the tmp file does not go away after the user closes Outlook and Word or Excel?


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## rvicker (Jan 16, 2004)

Outlook is not even involved. (Lotus Notes/Domino organization).

They are opening existing files and/or creating new files then saving them to MY DOCUMENTS/... and the *.tmp file gets created.


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## Anne Troy (Feb 14, 1999)

Repeat w/edit:

And are you saying that the tmp file does not go away after the user closes Notus Lotes and Word or Excel?


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## rvicker (Jan 16, 2004)

A) Email (of any kind) is not involved in this problem

B) Yes, the *.tmp stays around after Word or Excel is closed. It also only gets created when the true file gets saved (or SAVE AS).


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## Anne Troy (Feb 14, 1999)

Sorry, rvicker. I think I read your original question title as Outlook 2003 creating... sorry about that! Doh!

Okay, so B. I hate to keep interrogating, but... does this occur on a hard drive or a network drive?

Of course, creating temp files is expected--Windows does this. Leaving them behind after an application has appropriately closed is not normal. I assume the applications are closing properly? I assume the user has appropriate rights to these locations?


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## rvicker (Jan 16, 2004)

Now you have it  

Local drive (My Documents/...) so they have full rights.

Except for the *.tmp files everything seems to run/close normally.

Note that these *.tmp files are created in the same folder as the good file (not the %temp% folder) and these are not the ~w****.tmp files that you normally see while a document is open. They have the good file name as the first part of the *.tmp file name and are only created at the time the user saves the good file. While the file is open these *.tmp files have not yet been created and if they don't "Save" or "Save As" they don't get created.


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## mark007 (Sep 15, 2004)

The exact same problem has just started on my work PC - very odd. Did you ever get it resolved?


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## rvicker (Jan 16, 2004)

Nope.

Dreamboat was out in left field from the beginning and now it looks like noone else knowledgable is looking here because they see that there are replies even though there is no solution.

Been thinking about starting a new thread just to see if another expert will pickup on it.


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## jbrek (Nov 28, 2005)

Have the same problem with Word, but Excel just creates random file name with no extension. This only happens on network drives all users are not affected. 

To stop the creation of random files give the users modify access to the directory. 

There got to be a better fix.


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## mark007 (Sep 15, 2004)

Well after 4 unsucessful hours on the phone with MS I finally sorted it whilst on hold. The problem appears to be something within the AVG resident shield as if I tunr it off then all works fine. I haven't dug down any deeper than this so far but thought I'd let you know.


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