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When I open a Word document, it creates files in the same directory with a syntax like ~$documentname.docx.

Is there a way to eliminate it or tell Word to save those to a temporary directory? It makes the whole directory a mess with temp names and sometimes they're not deleted.

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    Good question. The harm of those temp files is not in the space they use or even in the mess they create in the directory listing, but in that each time you only look at a Word document in a directory, the modification time of that directory gets updated, so you cannot distinguish directories with recent files from those where you just happened to look at an old file.
    – Alexander Gelbukh
    Sep 25, 2016 at 1:26

2 Answers 2

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According to: Description of how Word creates temporary files, the location where Microsoft Word, or any part of the Office suite, saves its temporary files is: "hardcoded information and cannot be edited".

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  • And it doesn't even take up that much space.
    – surfasb
    Aug 5, 2011 at 8:43
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You can prevent the creation of temporary files by using the "Open Read-Only" option from Word's file open dialog.

This only works from that dialog. The "Open as Read-Only", "Open in Protected View", and "New" options found on the extended context menu (shift + right click) in File Explorer will not prevent Word from creating temporary files.

For Excel and PowerPoint, using "New" from the context menu in File Explorer will work.

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