Problems with Word!

[erickg]

I am currently completing my undergraduate thesis and Word has all of a sudden stopped allowing me to save my file giving me the following message:

"The disk is full trying to write to "Erick's HD". Free some space on this drive, or save the document on another disk."

Unfortunately, the disk is not full (over 7 GB left) and it does not work to save the document on another disk (iPod Shuffle).

Does anyone have any advice on how to save the file without losing any of the data? (I do have an external backup of a few hours back, but would prefer not to lose the work I did in the past few hours)

 

[gauchogolfer]

What version of Word/ Mac OS X are you running?

 

[erickg]

Sorry about that, running latest versions of both. Office 2004 (w/ all updates) and OS X Tiger w/all updates.

As an update on the situation, Word just crashed, so I guess I'm forced to return to my latest backup in any case. I just hope this problem doesn't repeat itself in the next few days! (deadline's on Tuesday)

Luckily I printed out a copy a few minutes before it crashed, so all I have to do is type it all in again. Pffff! I really wish things like this didn't happen...

 

[robbieduncan]

Next time that happens you could try copying and pasting the text to Text Edit. That way if it crashes you can just copy the text back...

 

[erickg]

Good idea Robbie! I'll definitely keep that in mind next time.

Does textedit support Word's tables though? Fortunately I didn't lose any of my written text this time.

 

[thedude110]

Have you tried saving as anything other than a .doc?

 

[robbieduncan]

Good idea Robbie! I'll definitely keep that in mind next time.

Does textedit support Word's tables though? Fortunately I didn't lose any of my written text this time.

The Tiger version does when you open a .doc file. Note sure about copy/paste though...

 

[mkrishnan]

There is a longstanding issue with Mac Word that caused it to produce this type of error if the same open document had been saved too many times (nice, MS. ). I thought very strongly that this had been resolved at some point, but apparently this is not true. I've never personally run into it....

Here is a document with workarounds. Here is a Google Search that will get you a ton of stuff on this issue, and here is an article explaining some workarounds.

 

[erickg]

There is a longstanding issue with Mac Word that caused it to produce this type of error if the same open document had been saved too many times (nice, MS. ). I thought very strongly that this had been resolved at some point, but apparently this is not true. I've never personally run into it....

Here is a document with workarounds. Here is a Google Search that will get you a ton of stuff on this issue, and here is an article explaining some workarounds.

That's good to know. This particular document is over 30 pages long and I've probably been saving it every 15 minutes or so over the past 6 weeks. This is on top of the auto-save function that I have running every 3 minutes. Hmmm... I wonder if this could be my issue.

I think from now on I'll create a completely new document every week or so and copy the contents from the old one to (hopefully) avoid this issue.

Thanks for all the help guys!

 

[mkrishnan]

I think from now on I'll create a completely new document every week or so and copy the contents from the old one to (hopefully) avoid this issue.

From what I understand, this really just has to do with the fact that you kept the file open for six weeks. OS X has no problem being booted for six weeks, but Word is apparently a different story. Just save and close it when you're done for the day, at least once in a while, and this should be an issue of the past. My thesis was more than 50% longer than yours, and it turned out fine.

 

[erickg]

From what I understand, this really just has to do with the fact that you kept the file open for six weeks. OS X has no problem being booted for six weeks, but Word is apparently a different story. Just save and close it when you're done for the day, at least once in a while, and this should be an issue of the past. My thesis was more than 50% longer than yours, and it turned out fine.

Hmmm... I saved and closed it at least once a day, so I don't think that could've been the problem. I also reboot my iBook at every few days... I guess it will remain a mystery.

 

[tektonnic]

I'm almost convinced MS make thier software faulty for macs so it makes OS X look bad, I'd recommend AbiWord, very simular interface and very stable.

 

[mkrishnan]

Hmmm... I saved and closed it at least once a day, so I don't think that could've been the problem. I also reboot my iBook at every few days... I guess it will remain a mystery.

I dunno... the Macs I did my thesis on were rebooted once every three or four weeks. I did close Word out when I wasn't using it, though. I've never run into this problem. Sorry... I'm not sure why you've had it. Maybe you should do the "Workaround #2" in the link I provided, just in case?

I've had very good luck with Word.X and 04, FWIW... and I'm part of the camp that likes Office 2004 better than Office 2003, and misses Mac features when I go to use Office on Windows. So...eh. Not the place for that flame war.

 

[erickg]

I'm almost convinced MS make thier software faulty for macs so it makes OS X look bad, I'd recommend AbiWord, very simular interface and very stable.

With what just happened and the mood I'm in doing some of my work over again I'm very inclined to agree with you. However, in Word's defence, I've only had it crash once or twice over the past few years, which is less than numerous Apple apps.

I think it might be a conspiracy towards students trying to get their essays done. Those are, in all honesty, the only times I have had problems with Word. The excuse, "my computer crashed", has been used for so long that its lost all its value.

 

[MisterMe]

Hmmm... I saved and closed it at least once a day, so I don't think that could've been the problem. I also reboot my iBook at every few days... I guess it will remain a mystery.

mkrishnan described the general problem. As always, you mileage may vary. I seem to recall similar problem going back to Word 98. One of the things that you must remember is that the app creates a new temporary file during each save. These files are automatically deleted when Word is shut down. Perhaps, it there is only a limited number of such files which can be created each session. If this is the case, then you will exceed the limit quickly if you save frequently. The workaround would be to remember to shut Word down whenever you take a break.