Help - Word v.X unexpectedly quits; not enough memory or disk space

[cresko]

I'm at my wit's end!
While trying to finish about an 80 page report (with Table of
contents, large list of Tables and list of Figures), I am running into
a serious problem. I am saving incremental changes, and continue to
get to a point where Word unexpectedly quits. I've been wrestling
with this on & off for a couple of weeks, and I've about had it!

The document has quite a few tables, and at first I thought one or
several was corrupt (they would go completely to garbage). However,
some equations (using quation Editor) that I have would show up as a
blank boxes, and just the operation of trying to delete them will
cause unexpected quit. Sometimes I get an error message that "There
is not enough disk space or memory to display or print." I know that
pretty soon I'll get an unexpected quit. And typing up new tables and
replacing the offending ones (if I can actually open a previous
revision without it quitting) sometimes fixes the problem at that
table, only to seemingly move to another part of the document.

I'm using a powerbook G4 with 3/4 meg RAM, but the same stuff happens
on a co-worker's new G5 with tons of RAM, so "memory problem" doesn't
make sense. I've installed the latest update (Office X 10.1.5
Update), run Norton Disk Doctor, repaired permissions, and sprinkled
holy water to no avail.

I've searched a bit through the previous posts, but I'm just a user
and tried removing the "normal template," but don't know if I did that
correctly. I also saw some posts about fonts, but I would have
expected problems from that a long time before this if that were the
problem (and I confess I don't quite follow exactly what to do about
the fonts....)

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Cresko,

The "not enough memory/disk space" issue may be due to the fact that you've
been saving so frequently (not that that's a bad thing!). It sounds like
it's the 60 Saves bug at work. Two things will help:

1) In Preferences>Save, turn off Allow Fast Saves (and leave it off
forever!) and turn on Always Make Backup.

2) After working on your document for a while and saving frequently, close
the document and then reopen it. That will allow Word to get rid of all the
temporary files that it's been holding open.

Now, as for the unexpected quits ... it could be a font problem even if it
surfaced recently. But before pursuing that, eliminate the possibility that
it's a corrupt document. Turn on Show/Hide formatting. Then copy all but
the very last paragraph mark and paste into a blank new document.

If that doesn't help, then we're back to fonts, although quitting due to
fonts usually happens when you try to open the program. If that never
happens to you, then that's probably not it. However, the procedures for
testing fonts are explained here and it's a pretty straightforward
explanation that you should be able to follow:
<http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=313535>

Also, I doubt that the Normal template or Preferences are the problem, but
here are the procedures for testing them:

1) Quit Word and navigate to your Normal template which should be in
/Applications/Microsoft Office X/Templates/. Rename Normal to something else
(like OldNormal), then relaunch Word. If this fixes the problem but you
have customizations, etc, in OldNormal that you want to maintain, you can
use Organizer to transfer those from OldNormal to the newly-created Normal
template. Then you can trash the old renamed file. To learn how to use
Organizer, see here (use IE not Safari to view this site):
<http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/MacWordNormalTemplate.htm>

If this doesn't fix the problem, quit Word again, trash the new Normal and
rename OldNormal back to Normal.

2) To test your Preference files, quit *all* Office Applications.
Navigate to your ~/library/preferences/Microsoft folder. Rename the
Microsoft Component Preferences, Word Settings (10), and Microsoft Office
Settings (10) files. When you restart Word, these files will be recreated.
If all is well, you can trash the old files. You will have to reset some
Preferences and AutoCorrect settings.

If this doesn't help, you can trash the new files and rename the old ones
back.

I hope something here helps.

--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/WordMac/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html>