Microsoft Office showing me older versions of documents

[jojoba]

I realise this makes me sound insane but I've experienced this several times now and several people have witnessed it, so please hear me out.

When using MO Word and Power Point on my MBA, I regularly experience that when I click on a file, an older version of the document opens. This has screwed me up different times now (work presentations, etc, very annoying). I have no idea why or how it happens. I've had colleagues watching me save the newest version of documents only to have earlier ones open when I reopen them and I have no idea at all what is happening. They don't either.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about, and how I can get rid of this? My MO pack was provided to me by my University and it's the 2011 version.

 

[MisterMe]

What you are describing sounds like MacOS X 10.7 Lion. When launched, applications automatically reopen documents that were open when the application was last quit.

 

[jojoba]

What you are describing sounds like MacOS X 10.7 Lion. When launched, applications automatically reopen documents that were open when the application was last quit.

Yes, I know about that feature, but that's not the issue here. I've since had this happen to me with Papers as well. I really can't figure it out

 

[Gregg2]

Yes, I know about that feature, but that's not the issue here. I've since had this happen to me with Papers as well. I really can't figure it out

Do you mean Pages?

I'd suspect corrupt plist files first, but I'm not guarantying that's the problem.

 

[jojoba]

Do you mean Pages?

I'd suspect corrupt plist files first, but I'm not guarantying that's the problem.

Thanks for the input, Gregg. Would reinstalling MO solve that issue (I don't really know what corrupt plist files mean.. )?

I mean Papers, not Pages
http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/mac

I don't use Pages, because I collaborate a lot with colleagues who work in a Windows environment. I think I've figured out now what the issues with Papers was, for some reason it had established duplicate libraries in the library folder, which I think might have to do with the fact that I was experimenting with syncing the library across computers via Dropbox. So I've resolved that one, but I really need to fix the PowerPoint issue, I've turned up at work presentations with the wrong copy twice now.

 

[Gregg2]

Well, based on your solution for Papers, I'm fairly confident that my suspect is not guilty.

 

[monokakata]

It's not impossible that although you think you're opening the document you just saved, in fact the one you just saved was saved to a different place on your disk, and the one you thought you were saving remains unchanged. This can happen.

If you suspect it might be, then choose "Save As" and take a careful look at where Word is anticipating saving that document.

Alternatively, save with a new name -- a slightly different version of the document name, and then see where that document goes.

These are pretty obvious steps, I know.

Another thing you could do when looking for help here is to be explicit about how you open and save. Do you open the document from its icon either on the desktop (or other folder) or in the Dock? Do you use Word's File Menu for opening and saving?

 

[jojoba]

It's not impossible that although you think you're opening the document you just saved, in fact the one you just saved was saved to a different place on your disk, and the one you thought you were saving remains unchanged. This can happen.

If you suspect it might be, then choose "Save As" and take a careful look at where Word is anticipating saving that document.

Alternatively, save with a new name -- a slightly different version of the document name, and then see where that document goes.

These are pretty obvious steps, I know.

Another thing you could do when looking for help here is to be explicit about how you open and save. Do you open the document from its icon either on the desktop (or other folder) or in the Dock? Do you use Word's File Menu for opening and saving?

Thanks for the input. Yes, I've tried all that. I always open the document from Finder, not the 'recent docus' or from the dock. I'm going to reinstall MO tomorrow and see if that helps.