Why won’t my Word document save?

Here’s one for irony corner: if I’d written a document titled ‘why won’t my Word document save?’ in Microsoft Word, it wouldn’t save. But will Word tell you why it won’t save a document with that filename? Of course it won’t. This is 2017: what do you expect? Usability?

There are certain characters that you simply can’t put into the title of a saved document. And that doesn’t only apply to Word documents, by the way, but Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, digital photos or any type of file you attempt to save in Windows.

The question mark is on the list of characters that you can’t use in filenames. But Word doesn’t tell you this. Instead, if you attempt to save a document with a ? in the filename, Word will simply refuse to save the file. The average user might fairly conclude that Word has crashed, swear a bit and then spend the next hour re-typing their document. All you need do is remove that troublesome question mark from the filename and it will save right away.

So what, you might wonder, are the other characters you shouldn’t put into filenames?

Characters to avoid when saving Word docs and other files

According to Microsoft, you cannot use the following characters anywhere in a filename:

• Tilde ~
• Hash #
• Percent %
• Ampersand &
• Asterisk *
• Brackets ( )
• Backslash /
• Colon :
• Angle brackets { }
• Question mark ?
• Slash \
• Pipe |
• Quotation mark “

There are strict rules on the usage of full stops, too. You can’t use them at the beginning or the end of a filename, and you can’t use two consecutively in the middle of a filename. Frankly, we’d avoid using any full stops in filenames whatsoever, as you might accidentally change the file type, making it difficult to open the document.

Also steer clear of using the underscore or _ at the beginning of filenames. This will hide the file, meaning you might struggle to ever find it again unless you know how to view hidden files in Windows. (You can view Hidden items by ticking the box in the View tab of Windows File Explorer.)

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