Error #-51 ever since moving to new Mac - can't save files

Two things to do:

Use Disk Utility to repair permissions.

Delete the AppleWorks 6 preferences. See my user tip, AppleWorks has stopped working correctly, for more info.

Please post back after you've tried these. If you're still having problems, it could be a full disk, but that's unlikely with a new Mac.

Peggy

Thanks, but I did as you suggested and now AppleWorks
doesn't open at all. I hope I don't have to reinstall
it AGAIN. Any other ideas? I'm stumped.

Peggy's suggestion could not have stopped AppleWorks starting. There's some other problem here.

Please explain in detail what happens when you double-click AppleWorks. This detail will help us understand what's actually happening, and how it might be fixed.

Thanks.

Thanks, but I did as you suggested and now AppleWorks
doesn't open at all. I hope I don't have to reinstall
it AGAIN. Any other ideas? I'm stumped.

Reinstalling AppleWorks can't take more than 10 or 15 minutes. But before you go and invest that time, log in to a different user account and see if AW will launch in the new user. If it does not, then the 10 or 15 minutes to reinstall will likely be a good investment. If it does launch, then you likely have some kind of preferences issue that needs to be resolved in the original user account (I'm assuming you've taken Peggy's earlier advice).

This seems like it might be a permissions issue with Mac OS X, rather than an AppleWorks issue.

If you've repaired permissions and deleted your preferences per Peggy's suggestion then it might be simpler just to reinstall AppleWorks (about 5 - 10 mins).

If this doesn't work then there's probably a deeper problem with your Mac OS X installation that needs addressing.

I tried reinstalling AppleWorks. I'm back to square
one - the program opens but the same error message
comes up when I try to save. If it's an OSX issue,
how do you suggest I proceed?

Error code -51 means: rfNumErr: refnum error.

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/lenzo/html/mac_errors.html>

This is a file system error which in plain English means something like "I can't find the reference number for this file". Each file has to have a unique reference number.

In this case, AppleWorks is trying to save a file by asking Mac OS X to do this for it. But Mac OS X is replying by saying it can't create a file with a reference number.

This might be for a number of reasons. My first thought was that the file permissions were stopping the save process by 'locking' a folder. Another explanation is that your account is corrupt in some way. You can confirm this by creating a new User account in System Preferences and seeing if AppleWorks works in it. It could also be that you have hard drive problems. You can start up from your Mac OS X CD and run Disk Utility to confirm whether this is an issue.

My next step would be to:

1) Create a new User account and test AppleWorks in it. If it works OK, move your documents from your old User account to the new User account, deleting the old User account when you're done;
2) If this fails, reinstall Mac OS X. An 'Archive & Install' reinstallation saving your network preferences might fix the problem.
3) If all else fails, reinstall Mac OS X by backing up your hard drive and doing an 'Erase and Install' installation.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Dale