problem saving WORD document

start up disk full

http://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/what-to-do-when-your-macs-startup-disk-i s-almost-full--mac-31780

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-get-rid-of-the-startup-disk-full-m essage-in-os-x/#!LXQLu

You can't save on USB stick since there is not enough free space on the startup dish and he startup disk is used for such a transfer.

Apparently the way Word does auto save is to create a new temporary file, nothing wrong with that per se but the problem is that it does not seem to close the previous temporary file(s). This can eventually result in so many files being held open - there is a fixed limit defined by the operating system that it cannot create any more and therefore cannot do another auto-save or real save. The error message therefore is mis-leading since you have plenty of disk space available when this happens you just have no more files you can open. This seems to be more of a problem with network home directories.

Possible workarounds would be to do a save as to a new location, or to copy the entire document to the clipboard, create a new document, paste in to it, and close the old document. Doing a save or save as - if possible would close down all the auto-save temporary files.

Turning off auto-save would also avoid the problem.

Thanks, John, as your answer just helped me solve our problem. 🙂

Going on from your point, I'm guessing the problem my colleague had was, he kept creating new documents in Word, but didn't name/save them, so everything was Document 1 or Document 2. When the Auto Save kicked in, it was trying to generate a temp file called 'Document 1' which was inevitably bumping into a previous file hanging from earlier in the day.

He also only works from his desktop, which increases the risk of a duplicate temp file.