word 2004 "word cannot complete the operation because too many files are open"

S

sramdeen

Was the latest Office 2004 11.2 Service Pack 2 update supposed to fix
the problem above? I'm getting it on a OS X 10.4.2 client connected to
a OS X 10.4.2 server when logged in as a network user (home dir hosted
on X server). When logged in locally the problem disappears.

How many more years are we going to have to wait until the Word saving
bug is finally sorted once and for all? It seems that it's always Word
and never any other application that has this type of problem.

Stu
 
R

Rob Daly [MSFT]

I'm going to post this same information for every separate report of this
same issue that there is on the newsgroups. Hopefully, it will help at least
some of you:

The Problem:
Word is having various problems saving to remote home folder (henceforth RH,
RHF) shares from 10.4.x clients.

The larger problem:
Not everybody is having this issue and, of those who are, the problem
doesn't exhibit the same symptoms.

This one has been around for a while now and here at Microsoft we are still
working on pinning down the exact cause. Word File I/O code is incredibly
complex and that, combined with the configuration differences of remote home
folders, combined with the unknown change to RHF client code in 10.4.x makes
this a very tricky problem to provide a general fix for. I have been
personally working with many of the affected customers to try to identify
the cause and workarounds for this problem and while the cause remains
elusive, one of the following workarounds may be the one for you...

So far I can share these known workarounds. DISCLAIMER: NONE OF THESE MAY
WORK.

Workaround 1:
Check to ensure you haven't got two instances of the remote home folder
server mounted. Often, admins will have a logon script to mount the server
on the desktop to provide users easy access to directories other than their
home folder. This is bad as it causes Word to trip over a file lock problem
as it is working with duplicate paths to the same file. The workaround: Do
not remount the server, just create an alias to the root directory.

Workaround 2:
Change the user preference in Word to specify the exact path to the
documents folder. Go to Word: Preferences: File Locations. In the location
for document saving, navigate the path to the RH Documents folder. This has
fixed the issue for many customers, but again not for all.

Workaround 3:
Upgrade to 10.4.3. A small proportion of afflicted customers have been
reporting the issue's disappearance with 10.4.3. The worst that can happen
is that it doesn't work ;).

Workaround 4:
Turn off spotlight for OS partition. Read/Write operations may be getting
strangled by Spotlight especically when they are I/Oing over the wire to
disk space located on the RHF. This may help.

We are working on a better solution to this problem as a matter of highest
priority. As soon as I have any more information I will post it to this
newsgroup. MVPs or others, please feel free to cross-post this to wherever
it's needed or wherever I have missed.


--
Rob Daly
Macintosh Business Unit
Word Test

--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Please do not send email directly to this e-mail address. It is for
newsgroup purposes only.

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