Office 2007: Not Enough Memory or Disk Space

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Hello All
I’m sure hoping that someone in the Lounge has had a similar or the same problem . . . Several weeks ago, I tried to open Word to wrtie a few letters and got the error message that not enough memory or disk space was available. I closed the other applications that were running and tried again and got the same message. I tried rebooting — same thing. Eventually I gave up and went on to something else. Unfortunately, the same error message pops up when I try to use any of the Office 2007 programs. I contacted tech support for my computer thinking that I might have a problem with the memory or something else although none of the other programs I use appeared to be affected by this error. The technical guy thought he detected problems with the system board and they replaced it, but the problem is still present. The most recent suggestion has been to try a repair and/or an uninstall-reinstall. I haven’t tried that yet because I’ve heard so many problems can come up with the most recent versions of MS’ office suite. Prior to this, I have had two or three instances of Word running when I had seveal letters in process and Excel so I’m pretty sure that available memory is not the real problem. I’ve also used TaskManager to see what’s running and close programs that I didn’t need active — same result when I tried to run Excel or Word. So, has anyone else seen this or have any suggestions about what the problem may be? And how to fix it?
Thanks,
KatieM

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Have you recently installed any Office addins or any software that adds funtionality to Office?

Joe

--Joe

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First test in Word Safe Mode. From Start | Run (Winkey+R), type in

winword /a

and press enter. Word should start in Safe Mode. If it starts successfully, it points to something external to Word. This can be anything from a bad template (including normal.dotm) , the default printer driver (which Word MUST be able see) or third party add-ins.

For help with diagnosing this problem, follow the guide at http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProblemsStartingWord.htm

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Joe and Terry:
Thanks for the suggestions.
I haven’t tried to install or use anything that was not installed with MSOffice when I got the computer.
Word simply gives me the error message no matter how I try to start it. The other programs “offer” to run in Safe Mode. When I click on yes, they then ask if I want to try a repair, but none of them apparently can find the installation disk that is in the CD/DVD drive. Yesterday, I decided to go ahead and do the Uninstall-Reinstall, but, when I cranked up the Add/Remove Programs routine in Windows, it does not list MS Office anywhere even though I have seen it there when I uninstalled other programs. Does that mean that there is a problem with the installation? In any event, any suggestions for removing MSOffice so I can reinstall the darned thing? What would happen If I tried to run the setup program without removing the problematic installation? I know there are thrid party uninstallers “out there” but I’ve no idea which ones are more or less safe to use. Any other suggestions?
Thank y ou again,
KatieM

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Download the Microsoft WIndows Installer Cleanup utility. Use it to remove Office. Then reinstall afresh.

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if its not listed in add/remove software, there maybe an issue with your registry. try to run the install from the CD regardless, sometimes it can pick-up from what’s already installed and ask you if you want to add/remove or repair – choose repair option — this will at least check all the file on the CD with what’s installed (you will need to run the patches and SP’s later).

Open Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) and see what resources you have left – lower right, you will see a line of numbers in bytes, drop the last 6 to be MB’s of free RAM, if you do not have more than say 80-100MB, you may struggle running just one Office app, they can typically run up nearly 200MB each depending on what your doing, as i type, i have Outlook on 154Mb and Word on 68MB. If you have more than 3GB RAM in your system, it maybe an issue with your DesktopHeapSize setting, which can be changed to stop the resource errors.

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Open Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) and see what resources you have left – lower right, you will see a line of numbers in bytes, drop the last 6 to be MB’s of free RAM, if you do not have more than say 80-100MB, you may struggle running just one Office app, they can typically run up nearly 200MB each depending on what your doing, as i type, i have Outlook on 154Mb and Word on 68MB. If you have more than 3GB RAM in your system, it maybe an issue with your DesktopHeapSize setting, which can be changed to stop the resource errors.

On Vista, Win7, & their server counterparts the amount of free RAM is not a good indicator of much of anything. Memory management has been significantly changes such that the OS now operates under the theory that unused RAM is bad.

See Windows 7 memory usage: What’s the best way to measure? | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com for details.

Joe

--Joe

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Hi Ian, Joe, a nd Terry:

Thanks for the suggestions — it’ll take me awhile to try them, but I will get it done in the next couple of days. I’ve been using OpenOffice while MSOffice is down. It actually works pretty well, but it’s taking me too long to learn how to do things since it makes extensive use of templates and add-ins contributed by users that often behave erratically. Anyhow, I’d like to get back to Office. In general, I don’t think that memory is really the problem. This machine has lots of it. Checking the Task Manager indicates that maybe a third of the available memory is actually in use. Based on the things I’ve tried so far, it’s looking like the installation of the Office Suite has got corrupted somehow. I found the utility that Terry suggested and ran it. While it ran, it generated a buch of error messages but continued to run and eventually closed saying that it had run successfully and I should reboot to complete the process. I did, but the same error messages came up when I tried to run any of the Office programs. On the plus side, though, MS Office 2007 has “magically” reappeared in the list of programs to remove. Next step, I guess, is to uninstall the wretched thing now that I can, clean up the hard drive, and re-install. I just wish there were some way to figure out what went wrong so I can try to avoid doing it again!

Thank you again, everyone . . . I’ll post again after I’ve got through the process.

Katie M

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