Word and Endnote - insufficient memory

[jamesclaire]

I am at the final stages of writing a PhD thesis and use Endnote for
references. The file is now about 250 pages long with quite a few
refefences and it looks as if Word can no longer cope. When I try to
format a bibliography it tells me that Word has insufficient memory. It
tells me that I won't be able to undo the formatting, but when I agree
to this it goes no further.

I am using Word 2004 and Endnote 8 on a Power Mac G4 with 1GB RAM. Is
there anything I can do to help Word cope?

 

[CyberTaz]

Hello James -

Based on the info you posted I doubt that Word is to blame for the
issue. Word, itself is quite capable of 'coping' with the type of
document you describe. OS X, Word plus Endnote consume a rather large
chunk of RAM, so the message probably means what it says.

The easiest, most immediate & most efficient way of addressing the
problem, however, is to add more RAM to the system. That will also
speed up the oveall performance of your Mac - you'd be surprised at
what another 512 MB will do.

If that isn't feasible, the next things I would do is make sure *no*
other software is running, including anything such as Dashboard,
Spotlight, and all the other frills & fancies that we take for granted
(i.e., forget about). There are also a number of things through Word
Preferences you can do to conserve system resources, such as turning
off WYSYWYG fonts, AutoCorrect features, Automatic Spelling/Grammar
checking, etc. If you are using Track Changes or other features of the
program you might want to reconsider the necessity of doing so.

It would also be a good idea to check the available space on your hard
drive (at least I *hope* that's where the working file is stored). Most
software requires a rather large amount of free space in order to
operate effectively, and lack of same can sometimes be interpreted as a
memory problem.

HTH |:>)

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi James:

Other than making sure you have all the latest updates for EndNote, no,
there's nothing you can do.

Cyber is right: enough memory is the key to this: but trust me, 1GB is quite
"enough"

However, the error message you are seeing is a "generic" message that really
means "I am struggling to read this document." That's because EndNote is
rather fond of jamming kilobytes of information into a Word field that was
originally designed to contain only a few hundred characters.

There's a procedure on the EndNote website for attempting to resolve this
problem. You might also have a look at their compatibility information: you
will note that EndNote 8 is not compatible with OS 10.4.

Apple has created great confusion with its naming convention for OS X. For
compatibility purposes, we should really read that as OS "ex" version 4.3.
OS 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4 are five different operating systems,
and some of them are quite substantially different to each other. For
complex software such as Word and EndNote, these differences "matter"

Cheers

I am at the final stages of writing a PhD thesis and use Endnote for
references. The file is now about 250 pages long with quite a few
refefences and it looks as if Word can no longer cope. When I try to
format a bibliography it tells me that Word has insufficient memory. It
tells me that I won't be able to undo the formatting, but when I agree
to this it goes no further.

I am using Word 2004 and Endnote 8 on a Power Mac G4 with 1GB RAM. Is
there anything I can do to help Word cope?

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410