Microsoft Word cannot Save

microsoft-word microsoft-word-2007 microsoft-word-2010

8,996

This sounds like you are losing access to the hard drive. I have not encountered this in Word, but I have had a disappearing network share cause this issue with DTP programs. I would take a careful look at your hardware and especially your system events in the event viewer

8,996

Andreas Rejbrand

MSc in physics, former university-level mathematics teacher (seven years), former PhD student in mathematics, former medical student. Expert Delphi programmer. Win32. Creator of Algosim: https://algosim.org/

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Andreas Rejbrand over 1 year

I use Microsoft Word 2010 to write long documents. These typically include a lot of sections, graphics, formulae, footnotes, a TOC, an index, a bibliography, and inline cross-references and source references. Hence, I make full use of the (mostly) excellent functionality offered by the Microsoft Word word processor.

However, far too often (maybe once a day) when I try to save a document (Ctrl+S) after a few minutes of editing, the "Save As" dialog appears (which is unexpected, since the document is already saved as a file). And, then, no matter if I choose to overwrite the existing file, or to save as a new file, which are my only options, it fails with error message "A file error occurred" [translated from Swedish: "Ett filfel uppstod"]. Thus, I cannot save the document anymore!

Is there any known cure? I have experienced this problem since Word 2007. Now I use Word 2010. [This never happened to me when writing equally complex documents in Word 97 and Word 2003, which are stable as rocks.]

The only workaround that I know of is to copy the text to Notepad, create a new Word document, and spend a few hours reformatting it and recreating all formulae, illustrations, etc.

Some clarification

This has happened for a very long time, and with many different documents. And on different computers. My hypothesis is that Word is buggy, and that formulae and Word illustrations sometimes "mess up" the document so that it cannot be saved any more.

I just removed all equations and illustrations from the file, and then it was possible to save it. But when I undo (so that the equations and illustrations come back), I can no longer save. We are talking about many, many hours of work, so I am a bit annoyed...

Problem solved!

The problem was an illustration, the removal (and recreation) of which resolved the issue:
Andreas Rejbrand about 13 years

But the problem only occurrs with this very particular Word document. If I create a new Word document, I can save that one. And if I remove all text from the problematic document (Ctrl+A, Delete), then I can save it again. [And all other applications work just fine.]
henry700 about 13 years

Everything about your post makes reference to very long time scales and multiple documents. If it is a single document only, you should update your question.
Andreas Rejbrand about 13 years

Yes, this has happened for a very long time, and with many different documents. And on different computers. My hypothesis is that Word is buggy, and that formulae and Word illustrations sometimes "mess up" the document so that it cannot be saved any more.
henry700 about 13 years

My hypothesis is that word doesn't know what to do with a disappearing hard drive. In my post I reference a similar experience which I had with a different program (QuarkXPRESS). All other 4-5 programs which I may have had running at the time didn't care the share dropped, but Quark would not allow me to save the document, even locally to my hard drive. I am not certain this is an issue for you, but it looks like a similar problem. The point is that Word might be highlighting an intermittent hardware problem, and may just be a symptom.
Andreas Rejbrand about 13 years

I just removed all equations and illustrations from the file, and then it was possible to save it. But when I undo (so that the equations and illustrations come back), I can no longer save. We are talking about many, many hours of work, so I am a bit annoyed...
henry700 about 13 years

well, it sounds like you are on the right track, you didn't say it was reproducable at will. Remove one equation or illustration at a time until you can save it (to a temp file of course), as soon as it is savable, make a note of the one item you just removed, revert to the full document, then remove only the one item. See if it is savable.
Andreas Rejbrand about 13 years

@horatio: Yes, that would most likely work, but the document got hundreds of formulae, so it would be 'convenient' if there was some other solution, such as a bugfix, or some other workaround. Thanks anyway!
henry700 about 13 years

which bug would you like fixed? You need to figure out the problem first.
Andreas Rejbrand about 13 years

In Word 2007, it was worse. If you put an equation in a bulleted list containing soft linebreaks (Shift+Enter), then the document could not be saved until the formulae was removed. This has been fixed in Word 2010, I believe, but this is something rather similar.
henry700 about 13 years

Do you have change tracking enabled? What happens if you commit all changes or disable tracking?
Andreas Rejbrand about 13 years

@horatio: Sorry, don't use that...
Andreas Rejbrand about 13 years

I went through the equations and illustrations one by one and found the problem. It was an illustration. It had a background image, so maybe you were right after all. But I thought that images were embedded in the Word file (are they not?). I had to restart Word in order to make the "Use image as background" option to work at all again, but now it works.