Re: cannot save file - disk full error?

Hi Robert:

On 6/09/07 1:26 AM, in article
missinglink-0C2AD3.11261705092007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "RobertB"
<missinglink@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

No, the document is not corrupt. It's a very irritating bug in the way Word
and Apple cooperate (or rather: don't...) when talking to the file
subsystem.

Is that a derivative of using Rosetta technology?

Not that we know of. It's actually an error in the way Apple OS is
responding to the file write command. Word doesn't do a straight "write" of
a file, it "streams" the file to disk. That only works some of the time in
OS X. But I have never managed to get either Apple or Microsoft to tell us
exactly what this bug is, despite the fact that it has been around for about
four years and they have both made multiple attempts to fix it.


The error literally means "Unable to write to the file or its temporary
file". When they wrote the error message back in the days of floppy disks,
they assumed the most likely cause was that the disk was full.

About time to update the error message, isn't it?

Well, yeah, except: what would they update it to? If the file system is
working correctly, the most likely cause of a write failure IS that the
media is full :-) Since when this happens, Word can't see the disk at all,
it actually has no idea what is wrong... It seemed a safe enough assumption
at the time that an operating system would *always* save a file correctly
unless the destination media really was full!!

Airport? I don't use Airport on this iMac, but I'm a couple of Airport
Extreme updates behind (since the machine has an Airport card).

Try the update: It may change something in the networking software that
resolves the problem.


Check that the OS and Microsoft office respectively have all their latest
updates.

Office has all the latest updates. OS is 10.4.9 and all the security
updates have been applied. Updating QT is not going to resolve this
issue I suspect.

I suspect you are right, but try that update too :-)

Things seem fine today. Another possible cause, which I failed to
mention, is that the original document has macros in it and apparently
some linked files. It was most certainly created on a Windows machine
and I have never gotten a Windows Word document with macros to translate
properly to OS X. Usually, it can't find some file the macro is
pointing to. There are also some graphic conversions going on when I
open the file.

If the file has come in with a Template attached, and the template is not
available on the Mac, Word will get into a knot trying to reach the
template. You might try checking Tools>Templates and Add-ins. If the
template attached to the file is not available on your Mac, switch it for
one that is. Unless you check the "Update styles on open..." box, this will
have no effect other than to prevent Word looking for a template it will
never find...

Hope this helps

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:john@xxxxxxxxxxx

.

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