


This can be very frustrating and lead to a lot of extra work. If you are part-way through working on a document when due to circumstances outside your control (such as the computer crashing or a network problem), you are unable to continue, there is a danger that the changes you have made will have been lost. (You can view Hidden items by ticking the box in the View tab of Windows File Explorer.1643How can I recover a Word document I was working on when my computer crashed? This will hide the file, meaning you might struggle to ever find it again unless you know how to view hidden files in Windows. Frankly, we’d avoid using any full stops in filenames whatsoever, as you might accidentally change the file type, making it difficult to open the document.Īlso steer clear of using the underscore or _ at the beginning of filenames. You can’t use them at the beginning or the end of a filename, and you can’t use two consecutively in the middle of a filename. There are strict rules on the usage of full stops, too. So what, you might wonder, are the other characters you shouldn’t put into filenames? Characters to avoid when saving Word docs and other filesĪccording to Microsoft, you cannot use the following characters anywhere in a filename: All you need do is remove that troublesome question mark from the filename and it will save right away. The average user might fairly conclude that Word has crashed, swear a bit and then spend the next hour re-typing their document. Instead, if you attempt to save a document with a ? in the filename, Word will simply refuse to save the file. The question mark is on the list of characters that you can’t use in filenames. And that doesn’t only apply to Word documents, by the way, but Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, digital photos or any type of file you attempt to save in Windows. There are certain characters that you simply can’t put into the title of a saved document. This is 2017: what do you expect? Usability? But will Word tell you why it won’t save a document with that filename? Of course it won’t. Here’s one for irony corner: if I’d written a document titled ‘why won’t my Word document save?’ in Microsoft Word, it wouldn’t save.
