Cannot save file in word for mac 2011

In the preferences for Word 2011 - I unclicked (turned off) the automatic 'check grammar while you type' feature and was able to save my large document without the problems I had before. This feature seems to take up a considerable amount of memory. Hope this helps but will update as I get more perspective.

As an update to my earlier post, this issue suddenly started happening on my older MacBook Pro as well (not just my newer retinal display one, as I earlier stated), so now I'm totally in trouble. It does seem only filesize-related at this point. I turned off all grammar/spelling features and still got the error to reappear, although the first few manual saves didn't trip it (it took 3-4 saves until the error started appearing again).

This is unbelievably frustrating...how can Word not deal with "large" files???? And by "large", I mean 25MB or so...ridiculous! I have 16 GB of RAM in my Pro, and that should be serious overkill for any Word-related activities, if it truly is a memory issue.

Another thread about corruption of the disk by Word resulted in my getting this problem solved. Apparently there is definitely a problem with Word interactions with Time Machine (even when Time Machine is not doing an actual backup, but is ENABLED to do backups). I was able to resume normal work by doing this:

- Go into Time Machine preferences and turn it off using the big on/off switch.

- Go into Word preferences and turn OFF "Save auto recover info every.." and turn ON "Always create backup copy"

Also, I had to reboot. Once the error occurs in Word saying another process is using the file, something is corrupted in the OS until you reboot.

Also, it is possible the disk actually gets corrupted, but this is iffy. It seems to self-repair upon reboot. But, if you continue to have problems with the disk after above, you may need to reformat and restore your disk from a backup.

Apple is supposed to be working on an OS update to fix this problem.

Tedtoal 2's answer has worked brilliantly so far. Thanks for figuring that out!

As stated, it seems a problem related to Time Machine being merely 'on', regardless of whether a disk is mounted or not. Hope Apple gets that OS update soon, though...

No, I turned mine off, and it's not a problem. Just remember, of course, that since the "Autosave" features are disabled that if something bad DOES happen, you might lose any unsaved work. I might suggest simply saving very often.

Hello Tedtoal,

I recently had the same problem you describe that got you to apple support to exchange your hard disk. The second time it happened to you did you exchanged your HD again?

I have a one week old macbook pro retina 13 inches with standard specification. I just finished doing a clean install ( my first machintosh computer) with all the aupdates available and this bug happened to me on the first document I created. Of course I have all the triggers: time capsule, word 11 and the famous document which had one picture inserted (roughly 250kb of size) and two pages lenght but occupied 40mb! First i was asked to change names in order to save it, then the system crashed and disk utiliy told me to restart my laptop and run disk utility from there in order to repair the HD. It did repair it.

I am asking for your help based on your previous experience. Does my SSD have any sort of scar from this event? Was it fully repaired with no consequences wathsoever (like a new out of the box SSD)? Is it an ill SSD? Should it be adviceable to go to an apple store to further check it?

Thank you in advance!

This is what it showed:

**********

2013-01-23 16:59:00 -0600: Disk Utility started.

2013-01-23 16:59:09 -0600: Verifying volume “Macintosh HD”

2013-01-23 16:59:09 -0600: Starting verification tool:

2013-01-23 16:59:09 -0600: Checking file system2013-01-23 16:59:09 -0600: Performing live verification.

2013-01-23 16:59:09 -0600: Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.

2013-01-23 16:59:09 -0600: Checking extents overflow file.

2013-01-23 16:59:10 -0600: Checking catalog file.

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: Incorrect size for file Word Work File L_3.tmp

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: (It should be 39878656 instead of 47751680)

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: Checking multi-linked files.

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: Incorrect number of file hard links

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: Checking catalog hierarchy.

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: Checking extended attributes file.

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: Overlapped extent allocation (id = 1126190, /Users/polodane/.Trash/Recovered files/Word Work File D_2.tmp)

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: Overlapped extent allocation (id = 1126195, /Users/polodane/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Office 2011 AutoRecovery/Word Work File L_3.tmp)

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: Checking volume bitmap.

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: Checking volume information.

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: Invalid volume free block count

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: (It should be 16429723 instead of 16439458)

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: Error: This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD. Restart your computer, holding down the Command key and the R key until you see the Apple logo. When the OS X Utilities window appears, choose Disk Utility.2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600:

2013-01-23 16:59:29 -0600: Disk Utility stopped verifying “Macintosh HD”: This disk needs to be repaired using the Recovery HD. Restart your computer, holding down the Command key and the R key until you see the Apple logo. When the OS X Utilities window appears, choose Disk Utility.

I did not have the HD replaced the second time. Of course, software cannot damage the HD itself. It can only mess up the data on it. One time I observed this: the Word crash occurred, I ran Disk Utility and it showed damage and need for repair as yours does above, I rebooted and ran Disk Utility again, and it said the disk was fine. You should try that. If it still says the disk needs repair, learn how to restart into the recovery HD mode and run Disk Utility from that, and see if it will repair it. If it can't, you will I think need to erase the drive and reload the OS and your data onto it. But, if your computer still boots and is usable despite whatever disk data-format error exists, you might choose to ignore the situation and just keep using it. Definitely make regular backups. And definitely disable Time Machine and Word Saving of Autorecover Info until they fix this (how will we know they've fixed it???). Someone asked if it is really necessary to turn on Word's "Make backup files" option, and that is NOT necessary, but helps make up for the fact that autorecover is turned off.

If you do decide to erase and reload everything, I can suggest something. Of course, don't do it until you are sure you have a good complete backup. I had Time Machine backups and did one just before doing the erase/restore, but I have to admit I was uncertain the Time Machine backups were actually good, and I had to just trust that they were, and it worked ok. But you might actually consider buying a second backup drive and doing another backup, so you have two.

So, when you erase the disk (using the same Disk Utility in the recovery HD mode), after that you theoretically could just restore everything from the backup, which should contain the OS also. That's what I did at first, but it didn't work. For one thing, it did not restore my most recent login password, but an older one I'd forgotten. In the end, I redid it - I erased the HD, then loaded the OS onto it (using another part of the recover HD interface - it says something about loading a new OS), then I restored the Time Machine backup (also using the recovery HD interface). That worked, except that there were various lingering changes to OS settings that somehow did not get restored properly, that I gradually got set correctly, can't even remember what they were now but it wasn't anything big.

ted

Thank you for your prompt reply,

The computer could repair itself from the recovery HD mode. Afterwards i ran several times disk utility from the OS and also from the recovery HD mode and it states everything is just fine.

I wanted to know if I could trust that or if I should bring my laptop to apple service. After reading HD's had completely failed after this error I was a bit uncertain.

Do you know what happened to your first HD that apple replaced, if software cannto damage the HD itself. I thought that too but after reading on this bug and seeing so many people changing their HD's, I am a bit confused.

Paul

Perhaps I wasn't clear in my original message. Apple Store replaced the hard drive because they thought it was damaged. However, once I finally understood the problem, I realized that there had been nothing at all wrong with the hard drive, and Apple Store incorrectly diagnosed it as a failure. I'm very thankful they did, as I now have an HD that is twice as large! But there is no need to replace HD's, they aren't going to be damaged by this bug.

I experienced the same exact issue: I was using Word 2011, editing a document with a time machine drive plugged in, I inserted a picture file that must have pushed it over the file size that triggers this, and then I suddenly had all of the same symptoms described here.

I tried running disk utility after booting with command-R, which still doesn't fix the problem (says to restore from backup). I read that it requires booting from another drive to actually repair those hard link issues, which I unfortunately read after I already started the restore, so I have not confirmed this, but others might want to try that (boot from an external drive, maybe the backup drive itself, and run disk utility from there as opposed to the drive with the problem).

Assuming the restore actually works, I will have lost almost an entire day of work plus having to deal with this. My future solution will be to dump Microsoft and switch to openoffice, libreoffice, and pages. Of course, not all the blame belongs with microsoft (and maybe the issue was more the fault of time machine?) -- in any case an OS should not allow a single application to nuke an entire volume. Disk utility should also have been able to fix this, even if the document couldn't be recovered.

Here's an idea (that Apple will probably never hear or care about, but for what it's worth) -- why not make Disk Utility able to search the Time Machine backups so that if it encounters an error it can't fix, compare it to backups and only send the changes necessary to fix the part of the file system that's broken. This would not only save hours of the user's time waiting for a full restore, but it would mean that anything that is not corrupt that wasn't already backed up would still be there. This is about the fourth time I have run into errors that Disk Utility couldn't fix, so it seems like little development is going into one of the single most important tools an OS can even have.😮

A note re previous post - when you experience this problem, make sure you reboot your machine after disabling time machine, then check again for problems with the disk, before proceeding with a full disk restore. The problems may disappear with a reboot! Also, if you are able to reboot, maybe you can live with a slightly messed-up disk volume rather than risk a full restore operation!

Thanks for this reply but the Microsoft site you link to is very general and more of a redirect to another company rather than specific to this problem. Itd be helpful if you could point to where on MS office for mac's webpage this issue is discussed.

For instance, I found this link which lists known issues but it hasn't been updated since 2011 and doesnt mention the issue. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2586538

Like I'd mentioned above ... you'll have to browse the net a bit. Google it and see what you get.

Btw, I doubt if Apple is going to fix Microsoft's issues, but do download LibreOffice to get whatever you are doing taken care of first.

Same problem with a 40 MB Word doc. Using OS 10.7. 5. Good to see I'm not alone. Had to repair the HD twice with disk recovery.

Hasn't happened since I switched off dropbox, time machine and autosave. Thanks for those tips.

Its annoying that I can't back up so easily though. Does anyone have any recent info on the problem. Can't get through to Windows support.

Since last reporting here, I've updated Word to version 14.3.2 and OSX to 10.7.5. I turned autosave back on, and have not had any problems. I still have Time Machine turned off, and when I do backups I close Word and then tell Time Machine to do a backup. I'm not sure if that is necessary; the problem may have been fixed. I'm afraid to try it though. But since auto-save is working okay now, I think it probably has been fixed.