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MS Word for Mac, insufficient memory

Forgive me if this has been touched on elsewhere - it's not popping up in my search.


I have an iMac, bought only a few months ago (if you need to know: 2.7GHz intel core, 8GB 1600MHz DDR3). The operating system is OX S version 10.9.4.


I run MS Word for Mac as part of MS Office. The version of MS Word is stated to be Word for Mac 2011 version 14.4.4.


I recently tried to save a version of a large file. I should point out that I'm a literary agent, and I often have to edit or re-format clients' manuscripts. The save operation failed, and I got a message on screen saying 'The save failed due to out of memory or disk space'. My immediate reaction was "Surely not!"


Is this some kind of fixable glitch, or do I really have an iMac with the memory space of a 1980 Atari?


User uploaded file


Thanks in advance for any help.

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)

Posted on Sep 12, 2014 10:13 PM

Reply
20 replies

Sep 14, 2014 2:42 PM in response to Man-of-Mystery

Unfortunately, the "not enough memory" error message has been known to occur when the issue has nothing whatsoever to do with memory. i.e. it's a faulty description on a generic error that can be triggered by all sorts of things.

Open Font Book and validate your fonts. In addition you might want to delete the duplicate fonts.


How to use Font Book to validate fonts

1. Open Font Book in your Applications folder.

2. Select All Fonts.

3. Now click in the list of fonts and select all (Edit > Select All).

4. Under File in the Menu bar, select Validate Fonts.

5. Duplicate fonts will be marked with either the yellow badge or a black dot.

6. Select to remove or delete duplicates.*

7. Delete font caches (how to)

8. Restart your computer

* Step 6 – remove or delete duplicates is where the tricky part comes in. You can select to let Font Book disable or remove duplicates, but I’ve found that it removes the one you have not been using rather than selecting the best option. See Font Management in OS X, by Kurt Lang, for more info on fonts.

http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html


See Kurt Lang's directions here to remove font caches

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5873683?answerId=26188553022#26188553022


Office 2011 Duplicate Fonts to Delete

http://www.officeformachelp.com/office/font-management/#fontstodelete

**(Fair disclosure: OfficeforMacHelp is my site. I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.)

I should point out that I'm a literary agent, and I often have to edit or re-format clients' manuscripts.

You might find this technique useful.


The Maggie:

1. Create a new blank document in .docx format

2. Carefully select all of the text in the bad document EXCEPT the last

paragraph mark

3. Copy it.

4. Paste in the new document.

5. Save under a new file name and close all, then re-open.


This technique for de-corrupting is known as "Doing a 'Maggie'", after

Margaret Secara from the TECHWR-L mailing list, who first publicized the

technique.

Sep 19, 2014 6:36 AM in response to Man-of-Mystery

@dianeoforegon: Thank you for your help. Here is how things stand.


Firstly, thank you for 'The Maggie'. That's a technique I will investigate, though I'm not altogether sure what you mean by 'last paragraph mark'.


Secondly, Font book. I'm okay up until number 5. I get the following window:


User uploaded file

I take it that the 'yellow badge' to which you're referring his the one with the exclamation mark, opposite the legend '22 minor problems...'? I also take it that the next step is, or could be, to check each of those and click 'Remove Checked'?


I have yet to read the other links in depth, but will get around to them.


My first problem is with the 'Kurt Lang' item. It's gibberish to me:


User uploaded file

For a start I don't appear to have a 'Terminal app'. Or, if I do, I have no idea how to find it.


Okay that was the status report so far. If you have any other guidance, I would be grateful for it before I take any further steps.


Thanks 🙂

Sep 19, 2014 10:00 AM in response to Man-of-Mystery

The yellow badge indicates a duplicate. If you click on the 22 minor problems it will open the duplicates in it's own window. You can use the list provided showing the duplicates then run again to be sure you have them all.


Always delete font caches after cleaning fonts. This will force a restart.


The Terminal is in Applications/Utilities.

Sep 27, 2014 1:05 AM in response to dianeoforegon

Okay, here's how things stand:


I went through steps 1-8 as detailed by dianeoforegon on Sept. 14.


Step 6: I was asked for my system password many times. I didn't count how many times, but as there were 22 faulty fonts, I'm assuming that it was 22 times.


Step 7: I used Kurt Lang's method of opening the terminal app and entering sudo atsutil database -remove. Diane, despite what you said on Sept. 19, this didn't force a restart, so I restarted manually.


Having restarted I tried the operation that alerted me to the problem. I still got the message 'the save failed due to out of memory or disk space'.


I have checked the font book and validated the remaining fonts - there appear to be no problems, the duplicate fonts have been removed.


Does anyone, including Diane, have any other ideas, or am I totally banjaxed?

Sep 27, 2014 2:24 AM in response to Man-of-Mystery

Update:


As a double-check, I downloaded Office For Mac 2011 to my MacBook Pro, copied the file in question (a large .doc) to there, and tried the same operation. I got the same error message. It also informed me that there were 'too many edits' in the file. Maybe this is a problem with an individual file. I have just tried the same 'save as' operation with a couple of other similar-sized files on my iMac; although I encountered a few other minor problems, the 'big' problem didn't occur.


Can anyone (Diane?) confirm my impression that the problem is with the individual file? Or does anyone still detect an underlying software problem?

MS Word for Mac, insufficient memory

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