set up Word to automatically close after a period of time

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Tony - 10 Oct 2005 15:39 GMT

I need to be able to close a word document automatically after a period of
say 1 hour when it is not in use. The reason for this is that this document
is available to several people and sometimes users forget to close it when
they are finished which means noone else can save changes.

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Helmut Weber - 10 Oct 2005 16:53 GMT

Hi Tony,

I don't know your level of programming skills,

but one could use a windowselectionchange-event
to set the expiration time in an ontime macro to one hour.

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Greetings from Bavaria, Germany

Helmut Weber, MVP WordVBA

Win XP, Office 2003
"red.sys" & Chr$(64) & "t-online.de"

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Greg Maxey - 10 Oct 2005 17:40 GMT

That is above my head, but aren't you taking a risk that that user who has
neglected his/her document for an hour may or may not want to save changes
made. AFAIK there is no way a macro can make that decision.

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Greg Maxey/Word MVP
See:
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.htm
For some helpful tips using Word.

> Hi Tony,
>
> I don't know your level of programming skills,
>
> but one could use a windowselectionchange-event
> to set the expiration time in an ontime macro to one hour.

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Tony Jollans - 11 Oct 2005 00:35 GMT

I second that and would also add that it is possible to type away quite
happily without firing the WIndowSelectionChange event (or any other event)
and would recommend prompting the user and waiting a while longer before
automatically closing (and perhaps saving a copy if there are unsaved
changes). As Helmut says, this is advanced programming.

--
Enjoy,
Tony

> That is above my head, but aren't you taking a risk that that user who has
> neglected his/her document for an hour may or may not want to save changes
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
> > but one could use a windowselectionchange-event
> > to set the expiration time in an ontime macro to one hour.

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Dennis S - 11 Oct 2005 14:47 GMT

Tony:
Rather than closing a file after an hour of non-use, the following may be a
better solution...

Every time WORD opens a document, it creates another version of the document
with the same name except the first character of the filename is replaced
with "~$". You could check for this file prior to accessing a document and
check the owner of "~$" to determine who has the file open and create an
alert to user of the person who currently has the file.

You may want to refer to Microsoft Knowledgebase article Q211632.

Good Lock...

Dennis

> I need to be able to close a word document automatically after a period of
> say 1 hour when it is not in use. The reason for this is that this document
> is available to several people and sometimes users forget to close it when
> they are finished which means noone else can save changes.

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