MS Word and complex documents
 

Has anybody else seen or solved this problem?

I'm running two versions of MS Word (both under XP). At home I have 2000, at work I have 2003, I take documents back and forth quite regularly using a pen-drive. So far so good.


Word 2000 has this deeply irritating bug. With a more complex document (by which I mean full of tables, pictures, Excel and Powerpoint inserts, document automation and so on), from time to time it refuses to save it, claiming that every disk drive available is full. I can read the document, print it, even paste it into an Email (but not send as an attachment), but can't save the damned thing - forcing me to close and lose my edits. The current document that's giving me the problem is about 2½Mb, the drives I have respectively have about 400Mb and 50Gb of spare space.

Word 2003 does not do this.


I suspect that I may have to bite the bullet and buy a copy of Word 2003 for home, but for all other purposes what I have at home is absolutely fine.

Needless to say, my copy of MS Office (and Win.XP) has all the relevant service packs and bug fixes uploaded and installed from Microsoft's website. Which made no difference whatsoever.


Thoughts anybody?

G

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

Hi Genghis,

Long shot, and I know nothing of this particular bug in any version of Word, but is it possible that the problem is a lack of 'temporary' drive space? Some applications like to use the Windows 'temp' folder before eventually writing the file to its final location, and error message in such cases don't always give accurate information. My system used to have six partitions, and I would have problems when the Windows partition was full, even if the others had plenty of space.

If your home machine's Windows folder is on a third drive, other than the 400Mb- and 50Gb-free ones, this might be worth checking.

Crispy.

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

No joy, those are the main drives, I have a third with about 15Gb free - so can't see that being the snag, but thanks for the suggestion.

G

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

I don't know if this will help the situation, but sometimes Word documents can get quite 'bloated'. Copying the entire contents to a new document (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-N, Ctrl-V IIRC) and saving this one might clean up the document's internal bits and save some diskspace.
It could be worth trying this, to see if the new document with same contents displays the same behaviour.

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

Tried that already, an old trick to reduce document size.

Didn't work.

G :{

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

Welcome to the world of Microsoft "compatibility".

Despite their self serving fluff about consistent document formats, every new version of Word has a slightly different "improved" data format, the inner workings of which are proprietary. Old versions of MS Office cannot read documents created in newer versions reliably. Plain documents are usually OK, but complex documents are rarely backward readable.

The reason of course is to force people to do what MS would like to force you to do - upgrade to the latest and greatest version of MSOffice.

To use the much heralded MSOffice 12 will require that you purchase the new Microsoft Vista OS, which in turn will mean that you may well need a new PC since Vista's requirements are not small.

MSOffice 12 is planned to use an open XML document format, but with a twist - it won't be the OASIS Open Document Format agreed upon by a huge majority of players worldwide (Apple, Sun, IBM etc,. etc.). Curiously MS was a member of the orginal consortium that decided on the format, but Microsoft decided instead to go for it's own "improved" version - MSXML

Nominally open, MSXML nevertheless contains proprietary binary extensions which will render it's readability by non-MS applications dodgy to say the least. This is a last desperate attempt by MS to maintain their enforced lock on Office applications and therefore force you to go on buying their overpriced and buggy software.

Ghengis, I'd take this as a fairly distinct wake-up call to say goodbye to Microsoft.

The new OpenOffice.org's OpenOffice 2 is now out and available for free download from http://www.openoffice.org/ - OpenOffice is completely free to use and install on as many machines as you like.

OpenOffice uses the OASIS OpenDocument XML format by default, but can read, save and create documents in Microsoft formats using reverse engineering techniques. It too may stumble over complex documents, but as you have found out, so do Microsoft's own pricey offerings.

Time to say good bye to the world of Microsoft "compatibility" and get off their gouging upgrade merrygoround I think.

Not only the Commonwealth of Massachusetts but much of the rest of the world is moving towards a truly open and universal data format which is independent of the application used to create of read it, whether this be commercial or open source.

It's just too dangerous to allow one company (already with multiple convictions for abusive and monopolistic acts) to lock up the world's information in it's own proprietary and secret formats.

Edited to add: OpenOffice is of course available for a variety of operating systems:-

Windows
Linux (x86 and PPC)
Solaris (SPARC and x86)
FreeBSD
Mackintosh

So your chum on his mainframe or Mac will use exactly the same program to open your Windows documents and see exectly what you saw. Nice thought (and the way it should be).

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

If you really want to stay with word 2003, and I must admit I've always been a fan, you can pick up an upgrade online for about 76 green ones (are stg pounds still green? :) )
Not a lot of dosh to stay where you feel safe and comfortable :p

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

I think if you turn off the fast save option you may solve the problem in 2000

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

AHA, something I've not tried.

Sat at my Office 2003 work PC at the moment, but will give that a go this evening and report back.

G

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

"Fast Saves" is one of the worst defaults of Word! Any changes are added onto the document, then further changes are added etc. when loading, the original is opened and the subsequent changes are then added one after the other, taking longer and longer - eventaully the document is too large to save even if the finished item is only one page long! Select "always create a backup" at least you can easily go back from a disasterous editing session.
MikeD

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

Agree with the above Fast Save issue.
On another note you take work home then I believe answer get your company to buy you the upgrade...

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

Problem is, they may respond "spend all your time in the office and it's not a problem".

In the meantime, it turns out that the "fast save" option was always turned off. So, I tried turning it on - no change. I tried turning it off again - no change.

Aaaarrrggghhhhh !

G

(And this was in a session where I'd not run Acrobat reader).

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

Genghis, sorry for the duff suggestion. Have you tried "save as" with a diff filename and type rtf?
ALso, do you have any maths equations in the document?
Have you checked the following MS articles?
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;EN-US;q224041
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/224031/EN-US/
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=h...kb%2f873101%2f

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

Thanks Sticky, I think that you've put your finger on it.

Yes, I'm a heavy user of MS Equation editor, and all the documents that I've had the problem with have been ones in which I've had a lot of embedded equations.

Looking at that first link, it shows four workarounds, unfortunately none of which are acceptable to me, because I need to keep my equations editable, as well as requiring a lot of the other MS Word functionality that is incompatible with RTF.

So, it looks sadly as if an upgrade to 2003 is the way ahead. Ho Hum.

G

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

Mr. Gates WILL be pleased....

By-the-bye, OpenOffice has more than just an equation editor - the built-in OOo Math application is a full blown higher maths app. and designed specifically for people like Ghengis.

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

I endorse OOo too. Free, open source & uses open document format so no vendor lock in or forced upgrades. :ok:

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

A quote:

"OpenDocument, which OpenOffice.org uses, is approved by OASIS - the standards body for XML data formats in business; OASIS is sponsored by all the leading names in IT, including Microsoft. In addition, OpenDocument was submitted to the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) on 30 September 2005 for ratification. OpenDocument is a genuine vendor-neutral, open-standard specification free from intellectual property encumbrances. All developers are free to work with it."
Apart from it's native OpenDocument format, OOo can open and save documents in:-

Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP (.doc)
Microsoft Word 95 (.doc)
Rich Test Format (.rtf)
All the Starwriter formats (essentially the same as OOo)
Text (.txt)
Text Encoded (.txt)
HTML Document (.html)
Aportis Doc (Palm) (.pdb)
DocBook (.xml)
Microsoft Word 2003XML (.xml)
Pocket Word (.psw)

No one is asking Microsoft to abandon their beloved proprietary formats (ironically, one of the reasons why Microsoft clings to it's own proprietary variant of XML is because this contains embedded binary code to make it easier to read the old MS formats), but merely to permit the creation of OpenDocument data.

Microsoft could very easily have added support for OpenDocument as well as it's own proprietary MSXML format in Microsoft Office but chose not to. They wish to retain control of the office document standard and replace a truly open format with their own semi-open one. A great pity, since Microsoft Office is an excellent suite, but too bad for Microsoft.

The world is headed towards truly open formats for document storage for very sound business reasons. For many years Microsoft have "owned" most of the world's documents and profited greatly thereby, but times change and governments (like Massachusetts) and businesses (and users) are increasingly unhappy with this arrangement.

With closed formats the continued readability of a document base is essentially dependent upon the health and mercy of the owner of the proprietary format, which cannot be guaranteed. Many many users like Ghengis are fed up with the upgrade treadmill and the difficulties of exchanging documents.

The times are a'changing and Microsoft can either recognise that it's days of rich picking are over and make a bit less profit, or be steadily marginalised.

This doesn't help Ghengis, but it's worth thinking about.

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

you've probably been through this already, but, have you switched on the track changes thing? if so try accepting all changes.

I don't know if that will help, but hey, any port in a storm.

ST

Re: MS Word and complex documents
 

Nope, track changes has never been used on any of the offending documents.

I'll try this open-office thing and see what happens. But, I confess I've been using MS Word since about version 3 circa 1982 and have always been rather fond of it (when I started, everybody else thought it was poor and preferred either Wordstar or Wordperfect). Plus, work do provide me with W2003 for free on one PC.

Will report back,

G