problem saving with Microsoft Word in Office 2004 on G5 with 10.3.7 OSX

[JasonRomney]

I am getting a recurrent problem with Word whilst trying to save a
number of different Word documents and wonder if anyone has also
experienced this? I am using a dual 2.5Ghz G5 with 4GB RAM and 2
interal 250GB disks raided into one disk on the desktop using the OSX
RAID facility.

The G5 reports the following message when an attempt is made to save
just about any reasonably substantial Word document:

There is a serious disk error on file "Word Work File D_47857804"

Here are the things I have tried to fix the problem:

1. I booted into an OSX 10.3.7 installed on my external Lacie drive
which was created by using Clone Doubler on the G5's internal hard
disk. When I fire up Word from the Lacie external firewire disk (after
booting up from that Lacie firewire disk), the same error message could
be generated when repeatedly test saving a Word document.

2. so going back to a normal bootup, that is, from the G5's own
internal hard disk, the error message happens whether I save a file to
the G5's internal hard disk or to the Lacie external drive. (even
though it seems unlikely that both drives would have this problem).

3. I have reinstalled initially just Word and then the entire suite of
applications in Office 2004 for Mac and the same error message occurs
afterward when I try to save a document in Word. I have also tried
renaming the Word template Normal file, and renaming the Word
preferences file. I also did a full uninstall of Office 2004 via the
special UnInstall program, including a search (and manual delete) after
the de-install procedure for all Microsoft-related prefs and plist
files for each application in the Office Suite that might have been
left over by the uninstaller program. Then reinstalled the Office Suite
again - same problem.

4. I have tried to save multiple different documents but the error
message is not restricted to attempts to save just one Word document,
that is, the error message recurs after 5 to 30 saves are made of
apparently ANY Word document.

5. I copied the contents of one of the documents the saving of which
triggers the error message into a new document, and saved, but the
error message recurs with the new document thus saved, as well.

I can report the following observations:

1. the Work File identifier is different each time eg it is not always
D_47857804 but may be some other letter and number

2. if I search the hard disk for the Word Work File that is nominated
as being subject to the serious disk error, I can't find the file

3. If I ignore the error message and just keep working, albeit
nervously, the document does not seem to corrupt and seems to save OK
on subsequent attempts. (If I move the document onto another computer
and start editing it with Word on the new computer, no more error
message recur).

4. the error message can be fairly reliably summoned on just about any
document. I hit a keyboard key at random, over and again, saving
between key presses, and the problem recurs after about 20 such saves.

5. the same document(s) that trigger the problem (ie just about ALL
Word documents on the G5) will not trigger such a problem on the 17inch
Powerbook when using the same version of Word.

6. The version of Word I'm using on the G5 is 11.1 (040910). I've tried
to see whether the problem recurs if I go back to the version of Word
prior to the service pack upgrade and yes, the error message does
recur.

What do you think is the problem?

I have tried running Disk Warrior over both disks and they seem to
check out fine (ie both the G5's internal disk and the external Lacie
firewire disk).

Do you think this could be a Logic Board problem with the G5? Do you
think Word is actually saving correctly and giving a bogus error
message or that the saves Word is doing are somehow flawed when it
reports the error? Do you think this problem could be restricted to
Word only or extend to other as yet undetected applications? Do you
think this problem is common to all G5s running Word, or just mine? Do
you think the problem is related to the RAID array (uninstalling the
RAID is quite a business when you have a huge amount of data on a 500GB
disk... although that is obviously going to be one of my next steps).

Do you think the problem may lie, not so much with Word itself but with
the fact that the G5's internal hard disk (there are two internal
drives installed on the G5) have been fused together with a RAID array
to appear as just one disk?

Any advice or experience with this kind of problem would be very
gratefully received please.
Kind regards,
Jason Romney
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Jason,

I can't answer most of your questions, I'm afraid; but let me ask one: Do
you have "Allow Fast Saves" checked in Preferences> Save?

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

I can't answer your questions either, but some info: Word uses temporary
files to save the Undo list and probably do other stuff I don't understand,
so that while you have a Word doc open and are working on it, these
temporary Word Work files are constantly being generated. They are
automatically deleted when you close the doc (usually, anyhow).

Did you try repairing permissions?

Word Work files are saved in the same location as the document by default
and I don't believe that can be changed--I wonder whether Word could be
having space or permission issues accessing that folder, and Word can't
operate properly without the ability to create and save these temporary
files. Although that doesn't quite go along with the

There is a serious disk error on file "Word Work File D_47857804"

Message.

We haven't seen any reports of this, so I do suspect it is something about
your setup, but I really don't know enough about Word or OS X to be sure.
But since your setup sounds quite complicated, and the program works on your
Powerbook....

Test it on the G5 complex setup, but in a different user account?

2. if I search the hard disk for the Word Work File that is nominated
as being subject to the serious disk error, I can't find the file

If the doc is still open, I *think* you should be able to find this
file...but conceivably it could be invisible? Did you try searching for
invisible files too? Though I don't know what good finding the file would
do.

This is a completely different problem, but it does discuss a little more
about temporary files and their interaction with the OS:
http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2004/05/19/135315.aspx

 

[JasonRomney]

Beth, yes, I have checked and repaired all permissions and they seem
fine. Disk Warrior also gives the HD a full bill of good health. I have
been able to generate the problem with Allow Fast Saves turned off (my
usual preference) and also turned on. The G5 is currently back at the
dealer being investigated. I'd like to think the top of the range
Ferrari of Apples was able to do something as perfunctory as save a
word document reliably and the dealer is trying to ensure this is so.
If it turn out to be the case that all my other apps (and I have many)
are working fine and rock solid, but only Word returns this error, I
suppose I shall have to simply refrain from using Word on the G5. This
would be a sad state of affairs, but I suppose that's what I have a
Powerbook for. Do you think this will be instated as a recognised
problem so that the next Office patch may address and fix it? Or do you
think it sounds like a specific problem with my G5 and not a generic
problem common to all G5s? And do you think the RAID linking of the two
250GB internal hard disks in the G5 might be responsible in some way?
Should I bother un-RAIDing the disks (big job)?
Kind regards,
Jason Romney

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Jason,

You *should* have Allow Fast Saves turned off, always; so if that was your
setting, then that's not your problem. In other words, if a document you
created with Allow Fast Saves turned off has the problem, then Fast Saves is
not the culprit. Is that the case?

I am sorry, but I know nothing about RAID so I just can't answer your
questions on this subject. I will say this though: Word 2004 does not
normally have this problem saving documents (on G5s as well as other Macs)
and I have not seen your specific error message before. This leads me to
believe that there is a conflict somewhere in your system, but knowing
nothing about RAID, I can't say if it's the cause. Is there a way to bypass
the RAIDed disks to test this?

Did you try creating another user on the G5 to see if the problem manifests
there as well?

When you tried copying one of these documents and pasting into another
document, were you careful NOT to copy over the last paragraph mark in the
original document?

Does the problem occur with all kinds of documents ­ not just those created
by others, but documents created by you from scratch on the G5?

I know you've tried a lot of troubleshooting procedures already, but please
take a look here to see if you might have missed something:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/TroubleshootingIndex.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice; or use Internet Explorer for
this site.)

Hope this helps!

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Jason:

I'm going to take a wild guess here that this is the RAID expression of our
old friend the "Insufficient available file handles" problem.

Each time you edit a document in Word, it records the edit in a temporary
file (work file) in case you wish to back out the change. Under some
scenarios, you get a new temporary file open for each edit. Somewhere
around the 60 open files mark, the OS starts returning "You can't have any
more new files" messages, which Word interprets as either "Disk full and
unable to save" or "Serious disk error" (in other words, it can't get a new
file when it wants one.

The reason it's only "some" documents is because Word creates temporary
files if it "needs" them. If it already has a temp file it can use to store
the change it will. If the content of the document includes object types
for which Word does not yet have a temp file, it will create a new one for
each change.

I am guessing that you have a RAID 0 array, which could potentially cause
your controller to begin returning this error with 30 files open, given that
each file in a RAID 0 array could have at least two handles.

The reason you cannot see the files being complained about is that they are
in the System temporary folder. You would have to login as Root and give
your userID root access in order to be able to see these files in the
Finder. If you do this, don't forget to put things back again later, it's a
seriously unsafe practice to run logged in with root access for long.

I'm guessing that the location of the boot volume and the location of the
application directory will make no difference to this problem. The location
of the Word original document and the location of your user temporary
storage would have an influence: chances are if both the document and its
temporary files were on a non-RAID volume you would get a "different"
result. Not necessarily fixed, it could make it worse!

I'm going to seek a comment from the Word developers on this one.

Stay tuned

I am getting a recurrent problem with Word whilst trying to save a
number of different Word documents and wonder if anyone has also
experienced this? I am using a dual 2.5Ghz G5 with 4GB RAM and 2
interal 250GB disks raided into one disk on the desktop using the OSX
RAID facility.

The G5 reports the following message when an attempt is made to save
just about any reasonably substantial Word document:

There is a serious disk error on file "Word Work File D_47857804"

Here are the things I have tried to fix the problem:

1. I booted into an OSX 10.3.7 installed on my external Lacie drive
which was created by using Clone Doubler on the G5's internal hard
disk. When I fire up Word from the Lacie external firewire disk (after
booting up from that Lacie firewire disk), the same error message could
be generated when repeatedly test saving a Word document.

2. so going back to a normal bootup, that is, from the G5's own
internal hard disk, the error message happens whether I save a file to
the G5's internal hard disk or to the Lacie external drive. (even
though it seems unlikely that both drives would have this problem).

3. I have reinstalled initially just Word and then the entire suite of
applications in Office 2004 for Mac and the same error message occurs
afterward when I try to save a document in Word. I have also tried
renaming the Word template Normal file, and renaming the Word
preferences file. I also did a full uninstall of Office 2004 via the
special UnInstall program, including a search (and manual delete) after
the de-install procedure for all Microsoft-related prefs and plist
files for each application in the Office Suite that might have been
left over by the uninstaller program. Then reinstalled the Office Suite
again - same problem.

4. I have tried to save multiple different documents but the error
message is not restricted to attempts to save just one Word document,
that is, the error message recurs after 5 to 30 saves are made of
apparently ANY Word document.

5. I copied the contents of one of the documents the saving of which
triggers the error message into a new document, and saved, but the
error message recurs with the new document thus saved, as well.

I can report the following observations:

1. the Work File identifier is different each time eg it is not always
D_47857804 but may be some other letter and number

2. if I search the hard disk for the Word Work File that is nominated
as being subject to the serious disk error, I can't find the file

3. If I ignore the error message and just keep working, albeit
nervously, the document does not seem to corrupt and seems to save OK
on subsequent attempts. (If I move the document onto another computer
and start editing it with Word on the new computer, no more error
message recur).

4. the error message can be fairly reliably summoned on just about any
document. I hit a keyboard key at random, over and again, saving
between key presses, and the problem recurs after about 20 such saves.

5. the same document(s) that trigger the problem (ie just about ALL
Word documents on the G5) will not trigger such a problem on the 17inch
Powerbook when using the same version of Word.

6. The version of Word I'm using on the G5 is 11.1 (040910). I've tried
to see whether the problem recurs if I go back to the version of Word
prior to the service pack upgrade and yes, the error message does
recur.

What do you think is the problem?

I have tried running Disk Warrior over both disks and they seem to
check out fine (ie both the G5's internal disk and the external Lacie
firewire disk).

Do you think this could be a Logic Board problem with the G5? Do you
think Word is actually saving correctly and giving a bogus error
message or that the saves Word is doing are somehow flawed when it
reports the error? Do you think this problem could be restricted to
Word only or extend to other as yet undetected applications? Do you
think this problem is common to all G5s running Word, or just mine? Do
you think the problem is related to the RAID array (uninstalling the
RAID is quite a business when you have a huge amount of data on a 500GB
disk... although that is obviously going to be one of my next steps).

Do you think the problem may lie, not so much with Word itself but with
the fact that the G5's internal hard disk (there are two internal
drives installed on the G5) have been fused together with a RAID array
to appear as just one disk?

Any advice or experience with this kind of problem would be very
gratefully received please.
Kind regards,
Jason Romney
(e-mail address removed)

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[JasonRomney]

Dear John,
Thanks for your intriguing reply and I'm on tenterhooks to read your
input based on the consultation with the Word developers... Over the
weekend I'm going to make a fresh backup of the G5's internal RAID
united two 250GB drives, boot off the Lacie 500GB drive I make the
backup to, erase the G5's internal drives, split them into their
physical constituents (ie remove RAID), restore the OS, apps and data
from the backup to one of the internal G5 drives, then fire up Word and
see if I can reproduce the problem. This will determine once and for
all whether the problem is related to the RAID configuration. I'll let
you know how I go. The thing about your own analysis of the problem si
that I have been able to generate the error message even when Word is
the only application running and the Word document that generates the
error is the only document that is open. So it happens with way less
than the 30 files open scenario you contemplate.
Kind regards, and thanks again for your suggestion,
Jason Romney

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

John doesn't mean having 30 Word documents open--it's when it gets to 30
temporary files that Word is keeping going in the background to enable the
Undo list, etc--that triggers the problem. In his analysis. If you read
the link I provided earlier, it will give more description of this issue.

Good luck with all that. Knowing nothing re RAID, if you can boot off the
LaCie drive, can't you test running Word off that drive to see if the
problem occurs? Might be a less labor-intensive way of testing?
Daiya

 

[JasonRomney]

Daiya, I take your clarification regarding John's meaning on the Word
temporary files open at a time point. Its true I can boot off the Lacie
drive, but a Lacie drive of 500GB uses RAID, as far as I'm aware, to
join together two physically separate hard disks into one. I may be
wrong on this point, but that's what insiders tell me. Thus, even when
booting off the external Lacie firewire drive, we would expect the
problem to recur because it is still a RAID drive. In any case, I've
just separated the two internal drives of the G5 by removing the RAID
configuration (blowing away the data) and am currently restoring the
applications (and data) to one of the newly constituted internal G5
drives called, not surprisingly, "Applications". I'll then move the
data to the new internal G5 drive I've called "Data". And then I'll
fire up Word and see whether the save problem recurs, even without any
RAID situation. If it does not, we will know there is a reliable
incompatibility between Office 2004 Word and RAID on a G5 where the
internal drives are combined using RAID. If, however, the problem
persists, I'll know the disk error is caused by something else, such
as, I suppose, a physical hardware fault in the G5, or some
incompatibility between Word and other installed software. I'll let you
know shortly. I'm taking deep breaths and trying to be calm as I
perform this fairly drastic surgery. Kinda like Nip Tuck, except on
data rather than flesh. But just as (melo)dramatic. Kind regards, Jason

 

[JasonRomney]

Daiya, I take your clarification regarding John's meaning on the Word
temporary files open at a time point. Its true I can boot off the Lacie
drive, but a Lacie drive of 500GB uses RAID, as far as I'm aware, to
join together two physically separate hard disks into one. I may be
wrong on this point, but that's what insiders tell me. Thus, even when
booting off the external Lacie firewire drive, we would expect the
problem to recur because it is still a RAID drive. In any case, I've
just separated the two internal drives of the G5 by removing the RAID
configuration (blowing away the data) and am currently restoring the
applications (and data) to one of the newly constituted internal G5
drives called, not surprisingly, "Applications". I'll then move the
data to the new internal G5 drive I've called "Data". And then I'll
fire up Word and see whether the save problem recurs, even without any
RAID situation. If it does not, we will know there is a reliable
incompatibility between Office 2004 Word and RAID on a G5 where the
internal drives are combined using RAID. If, however, the problem
persists, I'll know the disk error is caused by something else, such
as, I suppose, a physical hardware fault in the G5, or some
incompatibility between Word and other installed software. I'll let you
know shortly. I'm taking deep breaths and trying to be calm as I
perform this fairly drastic surgery. Kinda like Nip Tuck, except on
data rather than flesh. But just as (melo)dramatic. Kind regards, Jason

 

[JasonRomney]

Well, I've just changed the internal G5 hard disks from a singled RAID
500GB combination to two single 250GB internal drives, restored all my
applications onto the first of the now two drives on the desktop, fired
up Microsoft Word, opened an application, made a quick change, saved
it, repeated this about five times and up comes the error message
again. Deep sigh. So the problem is not related to RAID. Back to the
drawing board. Any other suggestions? All other applications in the
Office Suite, and other heavyduty suites such as Adobe Creative Suite
CS, Macromedia Dreamweaver/Flash etc, Final Cut Pro HD 4.5, Apple
Motion, etc etc are all working fine (so far). I'm stumped.
Kind regards,
Jason Romney

 

[JasonRomney]

OK, so this time I took the opportunity of having a second internal
disk in the G5 (now freed up by the removal of the RAID configuration,
to reinstall the OS from scratch, install all the updates from the
Internet to bring it up to the latest everything (10.3.7 etc) and then
reinstalled Office 2004 from scratch on this virgin OS install. Then I
installed Microsoft AutoUpdate 1.1.2 when prompted (dated 9/11/04),
followed by Office 2004 for Mac Service Pack 1 dated 12/10/04. All
22.8MB of it. I restarted the G5, fired up word, summoned a document
and tried to save multiple times. I could not generate the error
message. So I suppose from this I must conclude that there is a
conflict between different software applications installed on my
computer. This is a vexing problem because finding the source of such a
conflict is obviously extremely difficult. But at this this throws more
light on the situation...
Kind regards,
Jason Romney

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Jason,

Well at least you're getting somewhere, wherever that is .

I can't remember all the things you tried before but was one of them
checking for Add-In conflicts? See here:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/Add-Ins.htm> (If using Safari, hit Refresh
once or twice; otherwise try Internet Explorer.)

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>

 

[JasonRomney]

Can anyone suggest a way around reinstalling all my apps in a fresh OSX
deployment? I'd like to avoid such a time consuming operation if
possible. Can OSX be reinstalled over the top of itself without
upsetting installed apps? If I have two OSX bootable hard disks
available on the same G5, is there a migration utility that will port
across to the new OS all the installed apps?

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Jason:

If you are still with us, would you like to email me a full (complete)
System Profile from your bad setup, if it still exists?

Please Zip or stuff it before you send it. I would like to put it in to the
developers.

I can't make any suggestions that would avoid a full re-install, because I
(now) do not have a clue what the problem was.

As I said, "something" is blocking Word from disk access. It can be almost
anything that prevents Word being able to write to disk. Word uses a
"streaming" access to write to disk, it is not a straight write such as
other applications perform. It's rather sensitive to timing issues.

Popular sources of bother are where the Applications folder and the user's
home folder are not on the same volume as the OS. Bad directory permissions
can do it. Backup applications locking files can do it. Incorrect user
permissions to the Temp directory or the document directory can do it. The
user of a Word document needs full access to both the document folder and
the temp folder, because Word performs a Write, Rename, Remove, Rename to
save a file. (It first writes a temporary file, then deletes the old
backup, then renames the original file as the backup, then renames the
temporary as the original -- the idea is to protect against crashes during
the writing of the file.)

The error message is so generic that the list of causes is endless (and I
don't know most of them!). I have not yet heard from the Developers.

Cheers

OK, so this time I took the opportunity of having a second internal
disk in the G5 (now freed up by the removal of the RAID configuration,
to reinstall the OS from scratch, install all the updates from the
Internet to bring it up to the latest everything (10.3.7 etc) and then
reinstalled Office 2004 from scratch on this virgin OS install. Then I
installed Microsoft AutoUpdate 1.1.2 when prompted (dated 9/11/04),
followed by Office 2004 for Mac Service Pack 1 dated 12/10/04. All
22.8MB of it. I restarted the G5, fired up word, summoned a document
and tried to save multiple times. I could not generate the error
message. So I suppose from this I must conclude that there is a
conflict between different software applications installed on my
computer. This is a vexing problem because finding the source of such a
conflict is obviously extremely difficult. But at this this throws more
light on the situation...
Kind regards,
Jason Romney

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[JasonRomney]

John, do you think if I install all the same applications again from
scratch, the disk save error will recur because of something innate, as
a repeatable conflict, between some combination of applications I use.
Or do you think this is more likely to be an anomaly and that even if
all the same apps are installed again (time consuming as that will be),
they should all (including Word), work OK after a reinstall? I suppose
only a complete reinstall will tell so, again, I'll let the list know
how I fare. How do I get a complete system log to export to a file in
the way you have kindly suggested I do to enable you to forward it to
the developers? Is there a utility that will grab all system settings
into a file? Or does OSX do this satisfactorily for your purposes if I
go to the system profiler, About this Mac, More Information, and export
command?

 

[JasonRomney]

John, do you think if I install all the same applications again from
scratch, the disk save error will recur because of something innate, as
a repeatable conflict, between some combination of applications I use.
Or do you think this is more likely to be an anomaly and that even if
all the same apps are installed again (time consuming as that will be),
they should all (including Word), work OK after a reinstall? I suppose
only a complete reinstall will tell so, again, I'll let the list know
how I fare. How do I get a complete system log to export to a file in
the way you have kindly suggested I do to enable you to forward it to
the developers? Is there a utility that will grab all system settings
into a file? Or does OSX do this satisfactorily for your purposes if I
go to the system profiler, About this Mac, More Information, and export
command?

 

[JasonRomney]

John, do you think if I install all the same applications again from
scratch, the disk save error will recur because of something innate, as
a repeatable conflict, between some combination of applications I use.
Or do you think this is more likely to be an anomaly and that even if
all the same apps are installed again (time consuming as that will be),
they should all (including Word), work OK after a reinstall? I suppose
only a complete reinstall will tell so, again, I'll let the list know
how I fare. How do I get a complete system log to export to a file in
the way you have kindly suggested I do to enable you to forward it to
the developers? Is there a utility that will grab all system settings
into a file? Or does OSX do this satisfactorily for your purposes if I
go to the system profiler, About this Mac, More Information, and export
command?

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Jason:

I "think" the following:

1) A re-install without running Office Remover has no effect at all.
Re-installing will not replace files that already exist, so re-installing
usually makes problems worse or at best has no effect at all.

2) If you run the Office Remover and then re-install, your results may be
"different", but I doubt if they will eliminate the problem.

I "think" your problem is a software conflict causing a contention in the
file system. That's what I need the System Profile for.

However, testing this is very complex. If I send a System Profile report to
the Word Developers (and they have time...) they will attempt to exactly
reproduce your computer and its entire software environment, then run tests
with a special version of the Microsoft Office software that has been
compiled with "instrumentation" to report exactly what it was doing when it
failed.

Unfortunately, that's not a 100 per cent guaranteed technique: the fact that
the test version of the software has the debug checked code in it, means it
is not "exactly" the same as the version we use, and thus may not fail at
all!!

4) To get a System Profile, go to Apple>About This Mac>More Info

A) When System Profiler starts, choose View > Extended Report

B) Choose File>Save As and choose the XML format. Remember where you put
it.

C) Browse to the report in Finder and right-click it

D) Choose Create Archive or Stuffit

Email the result to me at this address.

Put the password z14g2000cwz in the Subject line to prevent my mail server
from deleting your message.

Cheers

John, do you think if I install all the same applications again from
scratch, the disk save error will recur because of something innate, as
a repeatable conflict, between some combination of applications I use.
Or do you think this is more likely to be an anomaly and that even if
all the same apps are installed again (time consuming as that will be),
they should all (including Word), work OK after a reinstall? I suppose
only a complete reinstall will tell so, again, I'll let the list know
how I fare. How do I get a complete system log to export to a file in
the way you have kindly suggested I do to enable you to forward it to
the developers? Is there a utility that will grab all system settings
into a file? Or does OSX do this satisfactorily for your purposes if I
go to the system profiler, About this Mac, More Information, and export
command?

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[drdocument]

Hello, John.

I'm new to this thread, but I came here looking for a solution to the
same behavior in Word.
So I'll share my experience FWIW.
Periodically, while working on a Word Mac X document, Word will report
"serious error" with "Word Work File D_####".

I don't have a RAID, but I do have a G5 (dual 1.8 GHz) running 10.3.7
with file sharing on.
I'm running Office Mac X v. 10.1.6, and Allow Fast Saves un-checked
(learned that long ago).

I occasionally experience the "too many files open" error, especially
if I work the entire day and into the evening without quitting Word,
with file sharing on. I don't think I've ever experienced the "too many
files" error when File Sharing was off. But this problem is different.

With this new alert box, if I dismiss the alert then Command-S to Save
works fine (unlike the "too many files open" error). The first time I
experienced it (fairly recently, within the last couple weeks -- so it
may have something to do with 10.3.7 and/or Office X update 10.1.6) I
quit Word and deleted all the Word Work files I could find, repaired
permissions. BTW, I could not find a Word Work file with the same
number in its name as listed in the alert. Then after a day or so it
happened again. Then I did the same thing, and also deleted Word's
Normal template.

It's happened a couple times again since then, but only rarely. Today
when it happened I quit Word and used the Finder's "Find" command to
find files with "Word Work" in the name both visible and invisible. I
found only two, both invisible, both in
/private/tmp/501/TemporaryItems, one with a "modified" date of 8/23/04
and another with a "modified" date of today, 1/16/03. However, the
precise file name from the alert didn't appear; I suspect it was
deleted when I quit Word.

I suspect some minor conflict involving 10.3.7 and MS Office.
I'm going to turn off file sharing for the rest of the afternoon and
see what happens. Will report.
Hope this info is helpful.

Ken