It's by design that Word and Office creates temporary files and then renames them. If they are "left" somewhere I would suspect you have something else going on (e.g need either Modify or Full Control permissions on the folder in order for the file
to be renamed; or Antivirus may be preventing the rename or you have connectivity issues.).
To start with, if you can reproduce the issue relatively consistently create a new file called "Test" you will notice that a ~*tmp will exist in the same folder that you opened the file from.
Now close the file.
Open just Word : Tools | Options | Enable/Check Make local copy and now reopen the document and watch the folder - then close the document. Does the issue occur?
Do you have Application Data or My Documents redirected? If so, then you will need to change the location of the Autorecover files
To do this, follow these steps:
- In Word, on the Tools menu, click Options.
- Click the File Locations tab.
- In the File types column, click AutoRecover Files, and then click
Modify.
- In the Look in box, click a local drive, and then click the folder in which you want to save the files. For example, if you want to save the AutoRecover files to the C:\temp folder, follow these steps:
- In the Look in box, click drive C.
- In the list of folders that is displayed, click the Temp folder, and then click
OK.
- Click OK to close the Options dialog box.
By default, the Make local copy of files stored on network or removable drives a...
By default, the Make local copy of files stored on network or removable drives and
Save AutoRecover info every <var>N</var> minutes options are configured to save the user's files to the Application Data folder. When this folder is redirected, the files are given a temp.doc name.
Description of the "Make local copy of files stored on network or removable drives " option in
Word 2003 and in Word 2002
<cite>support.microsoft.com/kb/277010</cite>
