Microsoft KB Archive/20389

= Microsoft Knowledge Base =

Save Takes Too Long; RAM, Disk Space Use Information
Last reviewed: July 30, 1997

Article ID: Q20389

The information in this article applies to:


 * Microsoft Word for the Macintosh versions 3.0, 3.01, 3.02, 4.0, 5.0, 5.1, 6.0

SYMPTOMS
Certain circumstances may cause a Microsoft Word for the Macintosh document to appear to take an inordinate amount of time to save.

MORE INFORMATION
The Finder can report that a disk has a great deal of free space on it, but this free space may not be contiguous. This problem forces the System to fragment the file when saving it, further fragmenting the free area on the disk. When saving to fragmented disk space, a great deal more processing time is required to write the pointer tables. You should occasionally back up your work to a freshly initialized disk.

This problem becomes more apparent with Word because of the amount of disk space required for a save to the data disk; it also depends on the version of Word you are using. Word saves temporary files containing the edits that have been buffered from memory to the Word disk. If these files are fragmented by the System, recompiling during the save to the data disk will require more processing time.