Hi, I do a lot of work on large files in Microsoft Word 2007. From years of computing I've developed the habit of saving my files regularly, in addition to Word's auto-save feature. I notice, however, that no matter how often I save my latest changes, Live Mesh will never sync my active Word files until I close them. By comparison, I also sync my Onenote Notebooks, and these will update as I edit them, sometimes every couple of minutes. But no matter how often I save an active Word document, the latest changes will not sync until I close the file and then wait for the sync to kick in, which can take several minutes. I'd prefer the behavior with Word files to be more like how it works for OneNote. Is there any explanation for the discrepancy, and is there any way you might be able to work around it (so my Word docs will sync as I work)?
nmcallister - I believe that the issue you are seeing is more related to the way Word and InfoPath work with files more than the type of file that is being synchronized. When Word saves your open files, it still keeps the the files open after saving - it does not actually "close" your files until you close them. InfoPath, however, seems to be physically opening and closing your documents while you are still working. I know that notepad is a good example of a program that physically closes your files unless you are actively loading or saving a document. You can see this yourself by renaming or deleting a file while it is still "open" in notepad. Try the same thing on a Word document and you will get a very different result.
I know that Mesh does not sync up files while they are still "in use". The problem is that from Mesh's perspective, the doc is still "in use" by MS Word. As far as Mesh knows, MS Word could still be in the middle of something, and you can't have files being synchronized before Word is done with them. I don't know enough about this to say if Word is actually switching to a read-only file lock, and if Mesh could still sync the file if this was the case. I do know that if for any reason Mesh requires write-access to the file during synchronization, then even a read-only lock by MS Word would prevent synchronization.
I know this might not be a complete answer to your inquiry, but I hope it helps a bit. Does anyone know for sure if Word uses a read-only or read-write lock, and if Mesh can still synchronize files that have a (read-only) lock on them?
Thanks for the reply, Aaron. Your reply makes sense, but it's still a little bit disappointing. I'm sure it does have to do with how Word handles files -- I guess I just don't see why it's necessary for Word to operate in that way. 4BG of RAM should be enough to hold any document in memory. When I hit Ctrl-S to save my file, the file should be saved -- not still open and "in use"!
