For some inexplicable reason, temp files have been building up like
crazy in my client's My Documents folder.  The PC is running Windows
XP Home, with Word 2000 as the Word Processor.
Any ideas on how this somehow became the default location for temp
files, and how to change it?  Thanks...

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Request for Question Clarification by aht-ga on 04 Mar 2004 16:13 PST

pcventures-ga:

According to this page in Microsoft's Knowledge Base:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q211/6/32.ASP

Word 2000 uses the Windows Temp directory to store any temporary
files. If, for whatever reason, the Temp directory is not usable or
has not been defined, then Word will use the directory where the
document file itself is stored.

There are two places you should check on your client's PC. First, has
the 'My Documents' folder somehow become the Windows XP Home Temp
directory? To check this, try either of the techniques described on
this page:

http://windows.about.com/library/tips/bltip700.htm

The second place to check is in Word 2000's configuration. If you look
in Tools>Options>File Locations, you should see a category called
'Documents', and the setting should be the user's 'My Documents'
folder. This means any new documents created by the user will be
created in that folder first. If the TEMP directory is inaccessible,
and the user has not yet saved the file, then the temp files will stay
in My Documents until the Word session is properly ended. If your
user's experience with Word is anything like my experience with Word,
their install of Word will crash for reasons unknown, stranding those
temp files in the 'My Documents' folder forever.

Please take a look at these suggestions, and let me know if the %temp%
directory setting is the culprit. If not, we'll keep hunting for a
solution.

Regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

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Clarification of Question by pcventures-ga on 07 Mar 2004 12:58 PST

Sorry for not clarifying sooner.  I told my client to do the
start--->run %temp% thing, but haven't heard back.  I located the
environment variables section on my XP PC, so now I know where to go
on hers.
 When I hear back and give the setting a try, I'll post an additional
comment/clarification.