cannot save file - disk full error?

[RobertB]

I'm wondering if I have a corrupt file. I received a Word error message
indicating it couldn't save a file because the disk was full. I have a
250 GB internal drive with 230 GB of free space, so space is clearly not
the problem. I got the same message when trying to save to an external
drive of the same size. Closing other applications didn't affect the
message - it still happened. Eventually, I had to copy a chunk of the
open document to a new Word file and save that. Am I looking at a
corrupt document?

System is a 20" core2duo with 2 GB RAM (10.4.9).

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Robert:

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.

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.

But Word has not actually looked at the disk: it has received a "Write
failed" message from the OS ‹ which means Word can't see the disk at all.

If you go into Word>preferences and set "Always make backup copy" ON, you
will probably not see the error. If you are using an Apple Airport, check
it has the latest firmware.

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

If nothing improves, get back to us, there' one or two other things we can
try.

Cheers

I'm wondering if I have a corrupt file. I received a Word error message
indicating it couldn't save a file because the disk was full. I have a
250 GB internal drive with 230 GB of free space, so space is clearly not
the problem. I got the same message when trying to save to an external
drive of the same size. Closing other applications didn't affect the
message - it still happened. Eventually, I had to copy a chunk of the
open document to a new Word file and save that. Am I looking at a
corrupt document?

System is a 20" core2duo with 2 GB RAM (10.4.9).

--
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:[email protected]

 

[RobertB]

Hi Robert:

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?

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?

But Word has not actually looked at the disk: it has received a "Write
failed" message from the OS ‹ which means Word can't see the disk at all.

Makes sense in way, since it obviously knew nothing about the disk.

If you go into Word>preferences and set "Always make backup copy" ON, you
will probably not see the error.

I see. I have never used that feature. Might be a good time to try,
although it's going to create a lot of redundant files.


If you are using an Apple Airport, check

it has the latest firmware.

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).

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.

If nothing improves, get back to us, there' one or two other things we can
try.

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.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Robert:

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.

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.

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:[email protected]

 

[RobertB]

Hi Robert:



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.

"only works some of the time?" Sounds like a recipe for disaster. I
would assume file writes are controlled by the file system not the
application.

Well, yeah, except: what would they update it to?

"Word can't figure out what to do with this file?"

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!!

Reminds me of those old "out of memory" errors one used to see in days
gone by. However, I've seen disk full errors even as far back as Windows
3.1 -- bogus disk full errors.

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

And how on earth is Airport networking related to Word's view of the
file system?

..../...

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...

That box is unchecked. When I opened the document, the template was
simply listed as Normal. However, there are lots of styles in this
document, none of which I created (I should also add that this file came
from a European office using Windows of some flavor -- and it's in
French).

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Robert:

"Word can't figure out what to do with this file?"

Or even "Sorry, I am suffering Old Timer's Disease ‹ what were we talking
about??"

Reminds me of those old "out of memory" errors one used to see in days
gone by. However, I've seen disk full errors even as far back as Windows
3.1 -- bogus disk full errors.

Yep. Exactly the same thing: it's a generalised "write failure" with no
specific cause.

And how on earth is Airport networking related to Word's view of the
file system?

As I understand it, that issue was caused by an unset bit in the
flow-control message coming back to the OS. Because Word is "streaming" the
file to disk, it does it as a series of blocks. I think it waits for a
checksum on each block before sending the next.

The first version of the Airport Base Station firmware was one component
that would produce this error in Word.

I am right out of ideas on this bug: I am just suggesting we stir things up
a little in the faint hope that we can get something to "change"

That box is unchecked. When I opened the document, the template was
simply listed as Normal. However, there are lots of styles in this
document, none of which I created (I should also add that this file came
from a European office using Windows of some flavor -- and it's in
French).

If it is using "funny fonts" or "strange characters" Word may be polling for
the PRINTER looking for the font metrics. The communication failure may be
to the printer, not the document or its template.

Let's "Maggie" that document and see if that fixes it...

1) Carefully copy everything EXCEPT the last paragraph mark in the
document, then close it.

2) Create a new blank document and paste into it.

3) Save that to a new file name and see if that document behaves correctly.

That re-creates multiple look-up tables within the document structure.
Let's take a walk on the wild side here: the first thing Word does when it
tries to save a file is to resolve the editing in the file and clean up the
internal structure. If the internal structure is too complex, Word can fail
to clean it up. It then leaves whatever it didn't like in the file because
it doesn't understand what it is, and so is too scared to delete it in case
it's important. It may be that Word's attempt to resolve the code in the
document is taking so long that the save process fails on a time-out.

The Maggie manoeuvre forces reconstruction of the document so that the
cleanup process can complete.

Told you I was running out of ideas...

Cheers

--
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:[email protected]

 

[RobertB]

Hi Robert:



Or even "Sorry, I am suffering Old Timer's Disease ‹ what were we talking
about??"


Yep. Exactly the same thing: it's a generalised "write failure" with no
specific cause.


As I understand it, that issue was caused by an unset bit in the
flow-control message coming back to the OS. Because Word is "streaming" the
file to disk, it does it as a series of blocks. I think it waits for a
checksum on each block before sending the next.

The first version of the Airport Base Station firmware was one component
that would produce this error in Word.

I don't have an Airport Base Station, however. And that is one weird
error.

I am right out of ideas on this bug: I am just suggesting we stir things up
a little in the faint hope that we can get something to "change"


If it is using "funny fonts" or "strange characters" Word may be polling for
the PRINTER looking for the font metrics. The communication failure may be
to the printer, not the document or its template.

Let's "Maggie" that document and see if that fixes it...

Who's "Maggie?"

1) Carefully copy everything EXCEPT the last paragraph mark in the
document, then close it.

I can try. The document is about 87 pages long. Not that big though,
only about 1 MB in size with the graphics.

2) Create a new blank document and paste into it.

3) Save that to a new file name and see if that document behaves correctly.

That re-creates multiple look-up tables within the document structure.
Let's take a walk on the wild side here: the first thing Word does when it
tries to save a file is to resolve the editing in the file and clean up the
internal structure. If the internal structure is too complex, Word can fail
to clean it up. It then leaves whatever it didn't like in the file because
it doesn't understand what it is, and so is too scared to delete it in case
it's important. It may be that Word's attempt to resolve the code in the
document is taking so long that the save process fails on a time-out.

Word itself didn't appear to be hung, however. Least as far as I can
tell. Although I didn't do much checking at the time to look at CPU
usage.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Robert:

Who's "Maggie?"

Maggie Siccara from the Word-PC mailing list. Famous the world over for
discovering "the Maggie" which rebuilds corrupt Word binary documents.

Cheers


--
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:[email protected]

 

[RobertB]

Hi Robert:



Maggie Siccara from the Word-PC mailing list. Famous the world over for
discovering "the Maggie" which rebuilds corrupt Word binary documents.

Cheers

Oh. Well, the Airport Extreme updates are done. <g> Haven't noticed
anything really unusual since. Haven't tinkered much with that file much
either though.