title: Problems saving document immediately after Document Merge
body: <p>I have an application where I need to merge several nearly identical documents which had been sent out to several users and received with minor changes and comments.  The documents are fairly large (500K - 1M) and can contain tables and embedded graphics.  The point of this is to consolidate the changes and comments from the various users into one document, keeping track of who did or said what.</p>
  
  <p>The heart of this is the following procedure which uses <code>Application.Merge</code>.</p>
  
  <pre><code>Public Sub runMerge(files As String)
  
      Dim i As Integer
      Dim v() As String
  
      v = Split(files, vbCr)
  
      Word.Application.ScreenUpdating = False
      Word.Documents.Open fileName:=v(0), ReadOnly:=False, addtorecentfiles:=False
  
      For i = 1 To UBound(v)
          ActiveDocument.Merge fileName:=v(i), _
              MergeTarget:=wdMergeTargetCurrent, _
              DetectFormatChanges:=True, _
              UseFormattingFrom:=wdFormattingFromCurrent, _
              addtorecentfiles:=False
          DoEvents
      Next i
  
      Word.Application.ScreenUpdating = True
      Word.Application.ScreenRefresh
  
      ActiveDocument.SaveAs2 "Merge " &amp; Replace(Now, ":", "."), , , , False
  
  End Sub
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The code opens the first file explicitly, then merges the remaining documents in a loop.  Apart from being a bit fragile, this works correctly as long as the first document was explicitly opened.</p>
  
  <p>Once merged, I use <code>SaveAs2</code> with a new unqualified file name (i.e. no explicit directory).  This works fairly well.</p>
  
  <p>However, if I attempt to use <code>SaveAs2</code> to place the file in a different directory, as in</p>
  
  <pre><code>ActiveDocument.SaveAs2 "C:\.....\Merge " &amp; Replace(Now, ":", "."), , , , False
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>the resulting document does not re-appear on the screen after the merge.  Further, when explicitly opened later, the document appears somehow damaged, strangely formatted, in one case, some of the text appeared in an orange colour.  This behaviour has been seen in Word 2013 and 2016.</p>
  
  <p>Apart from saving the document in whatever default directory (My Documents, in my case), then explicitly moving the file in VBA using <code>copy</code> and <code>Kill</code> and what not, how would one save this without an extra step?</p>