Microsoft Word can access and edit documents both locally and remotely – such as the case on a file server on your network. Logically, it’s convenient to not have to first move the document locally to your hard drive before editing and, for the most part, this remote editing works well. However, if your work-flow consists of this setup frequently, it’s only a matter of time before the network connection or file server becomes unstable and that’s when problems occur.

It can happen that when editing a document remotely and having the network connection severed can result in data corruption. Additionally, it can happen that Word ultimately ends up crashing when it attempts to auto-save your work and the destination is otherwise unavailable – such as what happened to me today.

The solution actually exists within Microsoft Word’s advanced options; it’s just disabled by default.

Within Word, click the Office Orb in the top-left corner and select Word Options.

Navigate to the Advanced section from the left-hand list. Then, scroll down to the Save header – it’s near the bottom of the list. Specifically, the two options you wish to enable are titled:

• Always create a backup copy
• Copy remotely stored files onto your computer …

I highly recommend making this change before it really bites you – I’d suggest it’s only a matter of time if you are even a light Microsoft Word user.