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Getting "Want to save your changes" in Word without my having made any changes

PurpleQ 135 Reputation points
2025-10-21T21:08:55.3566667+00:00

On 2 Windows 11 computers in the past few weeks, when closing a document in Word I've been getting "Want to save your changes" without my having made any changes. The Save pop-up appears if I've had the document open for 1 minute, but not for open times that are much less than one minute.

Various workarounds have been suggested for this problem over the past decade, but this problem has only recently showed up for me, and on 2 computers, so there may be a new problem created by an update. I've tried the workaround of going to File > Options > Advanced > General and verified that the box for "Prompt before saving Normal template" is not checked. I'm using version 2509 (Build 19231.20194 Click-to-Run).

Word offering to save is a problem for 2 reasons:

(1) If one choose Save when NO changes have been made, the file will now have a new save timestamp, which makes the content seem more recent than it is.

(2) If the prompt to save is ignored and there ARE changes, these will be lost.

The prompt is most useful if it alerts the user if and only if there are changes to be saved.

Are others finding this is starting to happen to them too? Are there workarounds to stop it?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For business | Windows

16 answers

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  1. Teresa Parker 40 Reputation points
    2025-12-09T00:32:53.3266667+00:00

    We edit our local newspaper using Word specifically because of its precision regarding version control. Now, since yesterday, Dec. 7, each time I open a document, even making no changes in it, perhaps to check a word count or some other detail, I'm getting the save changes prompt. Precise timestamps are ruined this way. But also, the prompt creates anxiety: OMG did I accidentally change something? Should I save or not?

    This is a major, major problem and the fixes I'm seeing require resetting things within each document? You've got to be kidding me. Nobody has time for that. And I don't even know what half of those options are that you're asking me to pick through.

    My staff and I are working on dozens of documents a day, each one requiring meticulous care. Please don't mess with my mind this way. Please un-do whatever you did to make this happen. It's disastrous to editors.

    7 people found this answer helpful.
  2. Stefan Blom 338.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2026-01-07T11:10:52.4066667+00:00

    @Hippolyt, it has been suggested elsewhere that the Copilot add-in could be responsible for the excessive save prompts. Is that a possible explanation in your case? Do you have Copilot enabled and, more importantly, do you have the add-in installed?

    5 people found this answer helpful.
  3. Michael Butterfield 75 Reputation points
    2025-11-29T12:03:44.4333333+00:00

    This is a BUG. This is also a security risk. This was introduced recently by Microsoft and they need to fix it.

    Why is it a security risk? If you ignore the "save dialog" and click "Don't Save", very often, the next time you go to open the document you get the message that something occurred and you are opening a temporary version of the document (forgetting, but its something like an .asx extension). This is definitely a HUGE security risk; many of my documents are password protected. When it goes to open the temporary document, all security fences (passwords) are ignored and the document is exposed to whoever is looking at the screen. A bad actor could force a reboot of your machine and the next time the machine is unlocked, they could open the document and get access to it. Its not too hard to do.

    4 people found this answer helpful.
  4. Jeff Stucker 35 Reputation points
    2025-10-30T00:38:36.59+00:00

    This was NOT fixed for me by going to File > Options > Advanced > General, and unchecking the box for "Update automatic links at open".

    '(' Jeff
    \

    3 people found this answer helpful.
  5. PurpleQ 135 Reputation points
    2025-10-22T01:22:22.3966667+00:00

    It looks like #2 is correct: printer repagination.

    I created a one word file. It didn't suffer from the gratuitous saving problem.

    I then pasted the same word on many lines to create a 2-page document. It did suffer from the problem.

    I set the default printer to "Microsoft Print to PDF". The 2-page file now didn't suffer from the problem. To set to default I needed first to unselect "Let Windows manage my default printer".

    This bug should be fixed, but since I only print every few weeks the workaround is not much bother.

    Thanks.

    2 people found this answer helpful.

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