5 Best Practices to Keep Your Word Documents Healthy

This article focuses on simple practices that can keep your MS Word files healthy and save you the pain of data loss.

5 Best Practices to Keep Your Word Documents Healthy

Preparing documents can be tedious and time-consuming. This makes it extremely painful to lose your work due to data corruption. Even if you can use top data recovery tools like DataNumen Word Repair to get your documents back, it’s always helpful to prevent loss.  

Here’s a look at some best practices you can adopt to avoid the loss of any information stored in your MS Word documents.

1.      Use current versions of MS Word

Now and then, Microsoft releases new versions of the MS Office suite which comes with improved Word processor. If you continue using older .doc versions, there is a high chance of your documents getting corrupted. This is because of a myriad of issues such as incompatibility with newer versions of Windows. Moreover, Microsoft doesn’t support versions that have reached the end of their life cycle. This means that you will not get fixes to any errors that you may come across. Therefore, you are better off retaining recent .docx copies of your files. If need be, you can always save them as .doc files and share them with your stakeholders.

2.      Do not work for long without saving your work

One mistake people make is to work continuously without saving their work. In case of an abrupt system failure or power loss, there is a likelihood of losing part or all of your work. Although the auto-save feature allows you to recover part of your work, it is not guaranteed that you will get it. To avoid such, make it a habit to save your work every time you pause.

3.      Use MS Word Backup feature

Most people may not be aware of the MS Word’s auto-backup feature. When turned on, the system generates a backup file for your word document every time you save it. To activate this option, go to word options and under the ‘save’ category, select ‘Always create backup copy’. To recover your file, select File >Open then under Recent, choose ‘Recover Unsaved Documents’. This should take you to the backup file. While here, modify the file’s extension to .docx and you will have all your work back.

4.      Use ‘Track Changes’ feature sparingly

In case you are working with a small document, say a few pages,  it’s okay to track changes. However, this complicates your document code as the file gets large. This increases the chances of your file getting corrupted.

5.      Remove USB drives safely

If you are transferring your Word doc to a removable drive, do not just unplug it after you finish saving the document. First, close the document and then safely ‘unmount’ the drive from your computer before unplugging it physically. This protects your file and storage device from possible corruption.

Final Thoughts

Keeping soft copies of documents allows you quick access and can be shared easily. Moreover, it is easy to make changes to documents if the need arises. Therefore, it is imperative to keep your MS Word documents in good shape. If you follow the tips shared above, you will reduce the chances of damaging your documents. In case your backups get corrupted, always use trusted data recovery tools such as DataNumen Word Repair to recover your files.

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