"Save as" warning box

Question

In my Office Home and Business 2010 both Excel and Powerpoint display a “Confirm Save As” box if an attempt is made to overwrite a file.  However, this does not occur in Word 2010 although it always used to in my previous versions of Word.  How do I enable that warning dialog box for Word?  I have tried the obvious routes of options and the Registry.

Answer 1

What you can do is fill out the form at http://mymfe.microsoft.com/Office/feedback.aspx?formID=375 and/or https://feedback.office.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scrx=1 and describe the problem.

Answer 2

Thank you for your reply.  I had already tried running Word in safe mode thinking that add-ins or macros may have been the cause.  However, it made no difference, the warning box still didn't show.  I have tried the Current User part of the Registry but there isn't anything there that looks relevant.  It may be that the Registry key to switch this feature on and off is in a part of the Registry that deals with Word in a more global manner; I don't know.  Any guidance would be appreciated.

Answer 3

Thank you for your further reply.  The problem can be seen clearly by the following demonstration.  Open a file in Excel and do not change anything in it.  Click on the File tab then Save As.  Do not change the filename, simply click on the save button in the Save As box.  A warning box will be displayed with title Confirm Save As, a question and options yes or no.  This also happens in Powerpoint and is correct behaviour.  If you now try the same sequence in Word it doesn’t work, the Save As simply works as Save without giving you the warning, ie it overwrites immediately.

I would have expected Microsoft to have wanted consistency of warning displays at this level (ie file saving) throughout Office for obvious reasons.  In old versions of Office this consistency was evident and Word, Excel and Powerpoint all operated in the same way with the same warning boxes displayed for the same sequence of commands.

I have asked a couple of colleagues if their 2007 and 2010 installations give the same result as mine.  They do, so my guess is that the Microsoft people missed this when they made the major changes resulting in the 2007 and subsequent versions of the Office applications.  Even if they know about it they probably consider it too minor to bother with a patch.

It’s not the end of the World if it doesn’t work and I don’t really want to start trying to write something to make it work; but it is an irritant and does mean there is no second chance to rename a file in these circumstances.

Answer 4

Instead of deleting just the Data key in the registry you can delete the whole Word key. You'll lose a lot of settings of course.

It is strange that Safe mode didn't make a difference, though. I'm afraid I'm running out of ideas.

:-(

Answer 5

In Word 2010, if I specify an existing file name in the Save As dialog box, a message box whose title bar says "Microsoft Word" shows up, with three options: replace existing file, save changes with a different name, or merge changes into existing file. I'm not sure why you are not seeing that box. Have you tried starting Word in Safe mode (as part of troubleshooting)? Then does the message box show?

To start in Safe mode: Exit Word if it is running. Hold the Windows logo key as you press R; in the Run dialog box, type winword /safe and press Enter (note the space before the slash). Word starts without displaying a new, blank document.