Cannot paste into a blank MSW document

[Douglas McKibbin]

Why when I try to paste the contents of the clipboard into a blank
document do I gert the message "There is not enough memory or disk
space to complete this operation"? OS10.4.6 1GB RAM. I am pasting a
text document without any graphics pictures etc....

 

[CyberTaz]

Although RAM should not be the issue you make no reference to the amount of
free disk space available on your hard disk... That is just as important for
many operations. The general guideline is to not exceed 80% of its capacity
(although I personally don't see a real need for 100 GB free space on a 500
GB drive). Both the OS & any active applications need that amount of 'elbow
room' to operate effectively.

If that isn't the issue, make sure to specify what version of Word is
involved as well as any other details - such as the source of the data
you're trying to paste as well as its file size.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Douglas:

Further to what Bob said, I would add:

That's a "generic" error message. It "can" mean that you're out of memory.

It's more likely to mean "The destination document is corrupt" or "Word does
not recognise the format of the incoming text" or "Word cannot start the
converter for the incoming text."

To say more, I would need to know what you are pasting "from" and what
format it is (Unicode or Mac International?). And into which version of
Word you are pasting.

Cheers

Why when I try to paste the contents of the clipboard into a blank
document do I gert the message "There is not enough memory or disk
space to complete this operation"? OS10.4.6 1GB RAM. I am pasting a
text document without any graphics pictures etc....

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Douglas McKibbin]

Gentlemen,
Thanks for your help. I have 1GB of RAM and 164GB of free disk space.
The document is a Mac text document that I "Copy" to the clipboard from
a Helix database where the document is formed. It is a Mac text
document not unicode. I am pasting into Word 2004 v11.1. I am able to
paste some documents and not others ... it is inconsistent and does not
seem to have anything to do with the document size 10K to 50K.
Doug

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Douglas:

No, I didn't think it had anything to do with "memory". It can have, but
not on that system: it usually means "can't load the converter", or
occasionally "can't access the copy source".

When you "Copy" in a document, you often just set a marker in the source.
When you Paste, Word opens the source in the background, then converts the
text and passes it into the destination document.

Try Insert>File and see what that gives you...

The fact that it affects only "some" documents indicates a document-specific
problem. Can you type in the affected document? If so, that rules out
document protection.

Click your Show/Hide to reveal the paragraph marks. Where are you pasting?

What format is the Word document in? Again: This shouldn't have anything to
do with it: but this error can mean 'Cannot find or start the converter
needed for this operation', which can happen if your document is in an old
(pre-Word 98) version of Word. Check in File>Properties>General: if it's an
earlier version it should say so.

But I suspect that some of those documents are corrupt. This can happen a
bit if you are dealing with Unix line-enders. Try pasting from a different
(Word) source document.

Try copying all the text except the last paragraph mark into a new blank
document.

BTW: You're missing a few service packs for Word. You should be on 11.2.4
(Word shows just 11.2, build 060202).

Cheers

Gentlemen,
Thanks for your help. I have 1GB of RAM and 164GB of free disk space.
The document is a Mac text document that I "Copy" to the clipboard from
a Helix database where the document is formed. It is a Mac text
document not unicode. I am pasting into Word 2004 v11.1. I am able to
paste some documents and not others ... it is inconsistent and does not
seem to have anything to do with the document size 10K to 50K.
Doug

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[CyberTaz]

I'm not familiar with Helix other than by name, but based on other
experience I have to agree with John - If the document can be exported as a
text file, Word doc, or whatever you should then be able to simply _open_
the file with Word.

The native file may contain any amount of proprietary stuff that is
completely invisible to the user, but when you copy the 'text' the embedded
stuff gets copied as well. When pasted into a different environment it
bypasses the receiving app's filters and the extraneous stuff can cause all
sorts of havoc. In some cases it may not even paste at all - as John says,
Word may not be able to understand the clipboard's content.

Exporting, OTOH, strips out the proprietary stuff to render a transportable
document that should be readable by any app that can deal with the export
file type.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac