Hi Joseph,
I have to confess that I know next to nothing about the way Word works with
servers, so what I'm about to say may be completely irrelevant in your case.
There used to be a bug we called the "60 saves bug" where Word would throw
out the "Too many files open" error after about 60 saves. The thing is that
this bug was fixed in Word 2004, as far as I know. You don't say what
version of Office your users have, but if it's Office X, that could be the
problem.
If they're in Office 2004, however, that's not it. But on the chance that
something about the workarounds for the "60 saves bug" might be of use, I'm
going to reproduce an old post by John McGhie. Here goes:
=============================
The "60 saves bug" is actually an "Only a fixed number of unique file
handles are available" bug. A file "handle" is the internal pointer by
which the system identifies a specific file. It does not use the file name,
because it will have multiple pieces of a particular file open. At startup,
an application is supposed to request adequate file handles to cover its
operation, and to release these handles as it no longer needs them. Word
does not ask for enough, and does not release them.
The reason is this: While working on a document, Word saves out multiple
temporary files. These are of many kinds: there are scratch pads where it
puts data while it is moving it. There are undelete files where it stores
the material incase you want to restore it. There are transaction files
where it stores every edit you make, in case you want to undo any of them.
For as long as you have the file open, Word needs to hang onto all of those
files, because it can never tell when you might need one. In fact, if you
have copied any material from the file, Word needs to hold all of those
files open until you quit. The reason is that when you "copy", what you do
is remember an area of text: you do not put that part of the document onto
the clipboard. When you Paste, Word asks the receiving application what
format it wants, and creates it at that point. It needs to go back to the
temporary files and the document to get what it needs to do that. That's
why when you close Word you sometimes see a prompt that says "You placed a
large amount of stuff on the clipboard, do you want to save it for use in
other applications after you quit?" It's lying: there isn't actually
anything in the clipboard yet, it's asking if you want to put it there
If you say yes, it holds onto the file handles of all those temporary files
until you put something else on the clipboard.
Now, Word typically makes far more changes to a file than other
applications, and a Word editing session is typically a lot longer than that
of other applications. So eventually, it is going to run out of file
handles.
One of the reasons I do not get hit with this bug is that I run with "Always
make backup copy" switched ON, I set Auto-recover interval long, and I save
regularly. When you command + s on a file with "always make backup" you
switch the new version of the file for the old and release most of the
temporary files.
==============================
Sorry not to be of more help.
--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***
Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP
Mac Word FAQ: <
http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
(If using Safari, hit Refresh once or twice or use another browser.)
Entourage Help Page: <
http://www.entourage.mvps.org>
