Excel Creating Temp Files

[robertwj]

I was not sure where to post this, So my apologies if its in the incorrect forum

I am using Excel (MS Office 2003) and whenever i am working in a document, make changes and close it then excel will generate a temp file wherever that doc is located. so my documents folder is flooded with temps. I Have heard an anti virus could cause this, however i have tried two different anti virus apps and still no avail.

Could someone please help me with a solution or a temp fix like sending those temp files to another location.

Thanks alot

 

[Hawkeye22]

Have you looked under tools/options then look on the save tab.

 

[Saga Lout]

Hello and welcome to Tom's Hardware Forums.

It's just possible those Temp files are those created by Auto-Recovery which you can turn off in Tools>Options>Save menu. Check the location in there first. I think there's another option to create a backup of every file - I can find that option in Word but not yet in Excel. Hopefully someone else can track it down.

 

[robertwj]

I Have checked the save tab.
I cannot turn off auto recovery, i need it on 🙁

 

[Saga Lout]

That's why I suggested checking the location of those stored files - if they aren't in your usual folder, they aren't causing the problem.

 

[robertwj]

The Auto Recover files are set to go to:
C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\

Temp Files are appearing in:
C:\Users\User\Documents

 

[Hawkeye22]

Are you getting any errors related to this? According to this, you should be.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/814068

I'd check the permissions on the folder and make sure they haven't changed. The user should have read, write, and modify access to the folder.

Also, instead of trying different antivirus programs, try temporarily disabling the A/V program and see if it still occurs.

 

[robertwj]

No Errors at all. Its extremely strange

 

[Saga Lout]

This sounds just like the facility Word offers but I still can't find it in Excel. Have you any macros running?

 

[robertwj]

None at all

I Have even tried a office repair. re-install and a full registry cleanup along with ccleaner.

I'm starting to think another application could be clashing when Excel tries to save a file. What so you think?

 

[Saga Lout]

Are these files of type .XLS or .XLK?

 

[Hawkeye22]

None at all

I Have even tried a office repair. re-install and a full registry cleanup along with ccleaner.

I'm starting to think another application could be clashing when Excel tries to save a file. What so you think?

It could be which is why I suggested temporarily disabling your A/V software and to also check the folder where the temp files are being created and make sure the modify permission is enabled for that folder.

 

[robertwj]

Well the documents i work in are .XLS. the temp files created are .TMP

 

[Saga Lout]

Shows they definitely aren't of Excel's own creation then. Back to Hawkeye's suggestion.

 

[robertwj]

It could be which is why I suggested temporarily disabling your A/V software and to also check the folder where the temp files are being created and make sure the modify permission is enabled for that folder.

Trend Micro was previously on, Currently MS Security Essentials is on and the temp file problem was still happening while on Trend. Maybe Trend left some entries hmm

 

[bennythebutcher]

I am currently having this problem with Excel 2007. While I would love to give MS the benefit of the I can't. The first thing I did was create exception in MSE using the settings tab and exclude processes/file types. After that I attempted to open and save an excel file from the desktop. No dice, the 8 character file, extension .tmp, was still created.

Then I decided it was Trend because of some forums I've read. After using msconfig to disable trend from starting automatically and rebooting I was still getting the .tmp files. At this point I uninstalled MSE and restarted Trend Officescan. After uninstalling MSE the .tmp files are no longer being created, Trend Officescan is still running.

The downside is that I have absolutely no AV software running on that machine. If anyone else has a better solution that doesn't involve putting users at risk I would really love to know about it.

 

[logan_18]

I have this problem as well. I don't get it the first time I create and save a new Excel file.
But I do get it when I save an existing Excel file.
Excel creates a folder (not a file) with a random name, often with unusual or sometimes chinese characters.
the most common is a folder with the name OX - where the O has a squiggle above it.
but I have seen other folder names as well.
I run AVG antivirus and scanned and scanned again - just to be sure it isn't finding a virus on my computer.

I thought it was a macro virus at first. I formated my computer - deleted the suspect excel files that I thought had brought the macro virus to my computer - and have turned off all macros.
At first my newly formated computer didn't have this issue - so I thought the problem was resolved.
But, now a week later - it has started happening again.