Disallow opening more than one instance of theWord at a time?

[arraybolt3]

Currently, theWord allows you to open multiple simultaneous theWord instances on the same computer. I don't know if theWord has some sort of mechanism for conflict avoidance, but if not, this is somewhat dangerous if you have user modules that you actively edit. For instance, if a user opened theWord twice by accident (didn't realize they had left it open earlier and so opened it again), they might lose work on a user module if they work on a page of the module in one window, close it, and then close the other window while it's pointed to the same page. Worse yet, if two users are using theWord on the same device at the same time, they could try to modify the same file at the same time and destroy it entirely. (This sort of thing might happen if someone installed theWord on an application server, then allowed multiple users to access apps on that server. I have done this sort of thing, though I made sure to not use theWord at the same time as the other user and so it worked out.)

Assuming there isn't a way for multiple theWord instances to interact gracefully, I can think of two solutions here:

[*] Make theWord check for any other running theWord instances when you try to launch it. If it finds any, maximize the existing theWord window rather than opening a new one. This is probably close to the easiest solution.

[*] Make there be some way for theWord to have multiple windows of itself managed by the same theWord process, so that opening theWord more than once only appears to have the program launched multiple times. I don't know how hard this would actually be, but I imagine it would probably be very difficult, especially if theWord hasn't been designed with this in mind.

Thanks for reading this, and thanks for the awesome software!