There is a serious disk error on file ~Word Work File S{A1F41F30-FB84-B649-9F8A-F0A7D2698BBF}.tmp

I had this issue for many months and it was very frustrating--It was so frequent that I switched to Pages for a while. Since I have updated Word (running V 15.28 (160927)) for 2-3 weeks, I have not had 1 serious error. I am keeping my fingers crossed. 

I'm on a late 2013 MBA 11, running El Cap 10.11.6

I thought it might be helpful to read a post from someone who has had some good luck...

Hi everyone,

On 9/13/16, we released update 15.26 (160910), the September feature update for Office 2016 for Mac. Please install the update by clicking Help > Check for Updates > Check for Updates. Our engineering team has been intensively working on the ‘serious disk error’ issue and feel that this latest update will resolve it.

If you continue to experience problems, please reply to this thread with the following so that we can further isolate the cause:

1. A screenshot of the About dialog (that shows the Office build number).
2. A screenshot of the serious disk error dialog.
3. The output of running ls ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/Temp from Terminal.
4. The output of the command defaults read  com.microsoft.Word from Terminal if the issue happens in Word; or defaults read com.microsoft.Outlook if the issue happens in Outlook.

If you continue to experience the same ‘serious disk error’ issue that you did before installing the update, let us know and we will reach out to you in a private message to see if you’re willing to have an engineer speak to you directly to get it resolved.

If you experience any other file-related issues (other than the ‘serious disk error’), let us know that, too.

Again, we apologize for the frustration around this issue, and hope that this solves it.

Best,

-Erik, Office Newsroom