My word document for my book which is 100,000 words won't save. I also get a strange message

Question

I work on a 27-inch. Mac. The document I am concerned about is a 95,000-word Microsoft Word for Mac document that contains my next book. When I opened it I got a message that says the following: I quote: "This document contains links that may refer to other documents, which could be a security risk. Do you want to update this document with data from the linked files? "

What does this mean, and what do I do to get out of it? What does this mean and why do I get this message? Also, I can not consistently save the document.. For the last week, I have been writing without realizing that my edits are not saved. Can you help me find the documents that were not saved? How do I solve this horrible problem?

Answer 1

The message you are seeing indicates that your document contains links to other documents. This is a security feature in Microsoft Word that warns you about potential risks associated with updating linked content from external sources. If you choose to update, Word will refresh the links with the latest data from those documents. If you are unsure about the safety of those links, you can choose not to update them.

Regarding your issue with saving the document, it sounds like you might be experiencing a problem with the document itself or with Word on your Mac. Here are some steps you can take to troubleshoot the issue:

1. Check for Updates: Ensure that both Microsoft Word and your macOS are up to date. Sometimes, software updates can resolve saving issues.
2. Try Saving in a Different Format: You can attempt to save your document in a different format (like Rich Text Format) and then reopen it to see if that resolves the saving issue.
3. Open and Repair: Use the "Open and Repair" feature in Word. You can find this option when you go to open the document; select the file and then choose "Open and Repair" from the dropdown menu.
4. Check File Permissions: Ensure that you have the necessary permissions to save changes to the document. You can check this by right-clicking the file and selecting "Get Info" to view permissions.
5. Create a New Document: If the document continues to have issues, you might consider creating a new document and copying the content from the problematic document into the new one.

Unfortunately, if you cannot find the documents that were not saved, it may be challenging to recover them unless you have backups or autosave features enabled. It's always a good practice to regularly save your work and enable autosave if available.

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References:

• How to troubleshoot damaged documents in Word
• How to troubleshoot damaged documents in Word