Claude overwrote a user-edited .docx without confirmation, destroying manual work
Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 0 comments · opened Aug 11, 2026
What happened
Claude Code overwrote a .docx file that I had edited in Word and saved and closed. All of my manual work was destroyed.
Steps
- Claude generated a
.docx - I edited it extensively in Word (layout, line breaks, font sizes, rewrote the copy), then saved and closed it
- I asked Claude to read my edited version and ADD a supplementary section
- Claude read the text content and aggregate font-size statistics from the
.docx - Claude then regenerated the entire
.docxfrom Markdown and overwrote the same path - All of my manual edits were lost
- Claude claimed it could restore the file because it had "read" it — it could not
- It then failed several more restore attempts, consuming even more of my time
Problems
- Overwrote a user-edited file without confirmation. I asked it to add a section, not to regenerate the document.
- Claimed the file was restorable without verifying it. It only had the text and aggregate font sizes — not per-paragraph formatting, line breaks, or bold ranges.
- No backup was taken before overwriting.
Requested fixes
- Block or warn before overwriting a file whose mtime is newer than the assistant's last write to it (i.e. a human touched it)
- Automatically back up any user-touched file before overwriting
- Do not claim a file can be restored without verifying that it actually can be
Impact
Lost the layout work I had spent significant time on, and had to redo it. The failed recovery attempts wasted additional working time.
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(日本語)
Wordで編集して保存・終了したdocxを、Claudeが断りなく上書きして消しました。
「補足を足してほしい」と頼んだだけなのに、Markdownから全体を作り直して同じパスに上書きしています。
さらに「読み取ったので戻せる」と言いながら復元できず、復旧の試行錯誤にも時間を奪われました。
人が触ったファイルへの上書きは、既定で止めるか、必ずバックアップを取るようにしてください。