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

Anonymous
2016-05-30T19:08:24+00:00

everytime i save a word file on my mac i get this message. 

i'm using ms office v15.22.1. 

Please advise. Thanks

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2016-10-04T03:10:48+00:00

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...

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Anonymous
2016-09-14T17:39:21+00:00

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

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-06-04T19:09:18+00:00

    For what it's worth, I also reinstalled the operating system on my MacBook Pro and reinstalled Office from scratch. But I got all the same errors.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-06-05T07:54:34+00:00

    Same issue here - this is definately an issue with the update all fine until then. No software can find a disk issue and I have reformatted and re-installed.

    There is a serious disk error on file ~Word Work File S{E7EAAB67-C277-3949-BC11-36DAB63CC0F4}.tmp

    I get it in word and outlook

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  3. Jim G 134K Reputation points MVP
    2016-06-05T15:06:58+00:00

    I found an old Microsoft Knowledge Base article that discusses this error message in Word 2000 for Windows:

    WD2000: Error Msg: "Serious disk error on file "

    Attempting to translate what was happening in Windows to what is now happening on the Mac, I can think of some possible causes and maybe some cures.

    One problem could be permissions. There are some known issues with files saved on SMB and other drives. So one question that might be relevant to this discussion is where are the Word documents? If they are on external drives, try moving them to the Documents directory of your startup volume. Does the problem go away?

    Another source of trouble could be file names, file path length, or the name of the startup volume. There seems to be some sensitivity to long file names, names having special characters (even spaces now seem to be special), and special characters in the name of the startup volume. Try getting rid of any spaces and special characters at every part of the file path, and keep the complete path as short as you can. Does the problem go away?

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