Publisher memory leak?

[Jblair]

We are heavy users of MS Publisher 2003. I note that when a long session
includes opening a number of publisher documents, importing sections from one
to another, tuning graphics . . . that an error message often appears saying
the the "Memory is full."

This occurs on a system with 1GB ram, fully up to date Win XP Home running
on a six month old Sony Sony system.

Each instance of publisher may have as a maximum, a file open of 50-100 mb.
Typically no more than two or three instances are open.

Any advice . . . other than shut everything down and reboot?

John Blair

 

[Jblair]

Nice, helpful response. You suggest a solution with a cost of several
thousand dollars and probably 10-20x that in accumulated knowledge and
experience which would be made obsolete. You also assume that all software
for the MAC is bug free. There are too many miles on my chassis to believe
any software or hardware will or will ever be bug free.

You are wasting precious electrons.

John Blair

 

[John Inzer]

We are heavy users of MS Publisher 2003. I note that
when a long session includes opening a number of
publisher documents, importing sections from one to
another, tuning graphics . . . that an error message
often appears saying the the "Memory is full."

This occurs on a system with 1GB ram, fully up to date
Win XP Home running on a six month old Sony Sony system.

Each instance of publisher may have as a maximum, a file
open of 50-100 mb. Typically no more than two or three
instances are open.

Any advice . . . other than shut everything down and
reboot?

John Blair

================================
Closing all other programs, especially virus
scanners before beginning the heavy editing
might help.

Doing maintenance on a regular schedule
can make a difference:

Running Disk Cleanup, Error Checking and
Defrag on a regular schedule is a good idea.

(310312) Description of the Disk Cleanup
Tool in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310312

(315265) How to Perform Disk Error Checking
in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315265
(check the two boxes..."Automatically fix file
system errors" and "Scan for and attempt
recovery of bad sectors") the utility will run
the next time you restart your computer.
(run error checking repeatedly until it finds
no errors)

(314848) How to Defragment Your Disk
Drive Volumes in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314848

I run the following freebie several times a
day to keep unwanted files deleted. I find
it to be quite useful:
http://www.ccleaner.com/

Also may help to hide images unless thay are
absolutely necessary to the current exercise.
View / Pictures / Hide.

I suspect "heavy editing" includes many many
changes. Each change is saved in the undo
stack...this can consume your resources. Not
to mention that a 50 to 100 MB file can be
many times that when uncompressed and
open in your program.

Maybe more ram is a good idea and also it
may be worth a try to increase the size of your
paging file:

(308417) HOW TO: Set Performance Options
in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308417

 

[Ed Bennett]

You also assume that all
software for the MAC is bug free.

I'm on a one-man quest to rid the world of the mistake you've just made, one
person at a time.

A MAC is an acronym, standing for Media Access Control. It can refer to the
MAC Address of a network card, which is an almost unique identifier assigned
to a card at the point of manufacture. It is used mainly for network
security purposes.

You intended to mention the Mac - not all caps, as it's an abbreviation, not
an acronym.

You are wasting precious electrons.

Yes, but think what those electrons would be doing otherwise. They'd be
standing in line at the dole queue trying to find something to do with their
existences. Or worse, they might have fallen into degenerate orbitals!

Are you running Norton AntiVirus, per chance? What is Publisher memory
usage listed as in Task Manager when the error appears?

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

But some of us are going to top post regardless. ;-)

 

[Box134]

I think we'll rename you Fecesia. (Pronounced FEE-SHE-AH)

*useless crap snipped*

 

[Donna in Idaho]

Thank goodness for that! Top posting, that is!

 

[Jblair]

John, thank you for the guidance. I'm pretty good about the usual disk
maintenance stuff. The swap file is set at default (1.5 GB) . . . I might
bump it up a bit.

What I conclude from your comments is that this may be normal behavior. I
had noted this more often on an older system with just 256MB ram. With the
1GB system I thought that the situation might well be a Publisher bug. If
however it is a "feature" not a bug, I just won't worry about it.

John Blair

 

[John Inzer]

John, thank you for the guidance. I'm pretty good about
the usual disk maintenance stuff. The swap file is set
at default (1.5 GB) . . . I might bump it up a bit.

What I conclude from your comments is that this may be
normal behavior. I had noted this more often on an older
system with just 256MB ram. With the 1GB system I
thought that the situation might well be a Publisher bug.
If however it is a "feature" not a bug, I just won't
worry about it.

John Blair

==========================
Yep! I guess you could call it a feature.

1 GB of RAM sounds like unlimited
resources but the fact is...heavy editing
can still bog it down.

 

[Ed Bennett]

I am on a quest to rid the world of top-posters - it's completely
illogical and is against standard Usenet convention.

Oh please don't start that argument. It's even worse than buttered cats!

Top-posters also
never, ever, ever *SNIP*!!

Half the time, neither do you.

 

[Carrie]

Do yourself a favour - get yourself educated. Go to an Apple Store and play
with a Mac. Better yet, find a friend with a Mac and play with it (that's
what I did). An hour and you'll be wanting to ditch your PC and Windoze,
too... Trust me.

But then we wouldn't have a reason to be on a great group like this and
share and discuss and learn.

If you have a mac and no problems why do you spend so much time here?

They don't have mac groups because there are no mac problems?

~ Carrie

 

[Brian Kvalheim [MSFT MVP]]

I am on a quest to rid the world of top-posters - it's completely
illogical and is against standard Usenet convention.

These posts don't originate from the Usenet. Take your convention elsewhere.