Users of Microsoft Word for Windows are advised to be more careful when saving their work and documents; There’s a pretty bad bug in the program. Microsoft said that due to this bug, the popular text editor deletes files instead of saving them. The new problem does not affect all versions of Microsoft Word, but users of the program are warned to be careful when saving documents. Users “may encounter a problem, <..> if the name contains a file extension in uppercase letters (“.DOCX”, “.RTF”) or “#”” when the file is deleted after savingIt says on Microsoft’s support page.

A bug was found in Word in Microsoft 365 version 2409 build 18025.20104. This occurs when the user makes changes to a file, tries to close Word, and agrees to save the file by clicking a button in the pop-up window. This may cause the file to disappear completely, but it may also appear in the Recycle Bin where it can be recovered.

It is recommended to manually save the document before exiting Word to avoid an incident. “Our current testing shows that the issue occurs after saving when you click the cross to close Word. The support page does not currently play when manually saving before closing,” the support page says. You can also disable the display of this window when opening and saving files using keyboard shortcuts in the settings. Microsoft is investigating the issue and working on a fix; For now, users can revert to a previous version of Word.