"There is not enough memory or disk space to display or print the picture"

[i_lik...@officeformac.com]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Hello,

I have a 53.6 MB Word (.doc) file with pictures, but many of them do not appear, although they were originally fine. Instead, I get an error dialogue box which says "There is not enough memory or disk space to display or print the picture." I am running Word 2008 with 4 GB of RAM, which is the maximum my MacBook Pro can accept.

Are my images corrupt, or do I really need even more RAM?

It is simply frustrating that there are so many fundamental issues with Word 2008. I had to turn off Spaces, just to use Word reliably, and I have to careful about not embedding PDF images.

Anyhow, thank you in advance for any help.

[John McGhie]

Your images are not corrupt, and you don't need more RAM :-)

However, your "document" is corrupt. When Word attempts to access one of
those images for display, it can't read the image from the document. Since
the image does not arrive in memory where it is expected to be, Word assumes
it's out of memory.

It's not. But one or more of the images in the document is bad.

Sorry: The only way to recover from this is to create a new document, then
move the images into it, one by one, until you find the bad one. (Word will
probably crash or display an error message as soon as you touch the bad
image).

Hope this helps

On 10/09/08 8:04 PM, in article 59b59...@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"i_lik...@officeformac.com" <i_lik...@officeformac.com> wrote:

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:jo...@mcghie.name

[i_lik...@officeformac.com]

Thank you John for your reply. I have already performed what you recommended, but after a while, the images got corrupt again. I painstakingly found the original images, only to find out later that they couldn't be displayed. I believe the images in question were BMPs. Should I only stick to certain graphics formats, to be on the safe side?

[i_lik...@officeformac.com]

Hello again. My claim that the corrupted image files were BMPs could be in error. The BMPs generated in Windows XP seem fine. It's mostly the graphics files MATLAB 7.4 (Macintosh) generated, which become corrupt over time. I cannot recall which format I saved these though, although it's most likely JPEG.

[John McGhie]

I have a real problem offering recommendations about graphics formats --
they get into lot of mischief in a document.

I'll go out on a limb and say that the "format" of the image should make no
difference: it will either display or it won't and you will find that out as
soon as you insert it.

That said: when the computer starts to struggle, BMP will be safer than any
other format because it requires the least processing to display/print. For
things such as equations, my next choice would be PNG, because it does not
lose resolution and it's a "native" format to Word. For an even smaller
document, try GIF: the file is smaller so long as you do not need more than
256 colours (think: no gradient fills...).

However, what normally gives this trouble is not the graphics format itself,
but the way it was handled. If you create a blank paragraph in the
document, and insert a graphic "Inline with text" to sit on that paragraph
-- and you have no other "complex structure" such as a table or a text box
either immediately before or immediately after the graphic -- then it will
get into very little trouble!

Users who insist on placing floating graphics in wrapped text boxes anchored
to cells in floating tables with grouped floating captions in the middle of
a multi-column page will live in more interesting times. Convert the
document out of the native .docx format and high entertainment is
practically guaranteed.

The insides of a Word document are unbelievably complex. The new .docx
format is much, much simpler (and thus more reliable) than the old format.
But it's still extremely complex. Mac Word has a long way to go before it
could be considered "stable and reliable". PC Word has limitations in this
regard: there are things you don't do, or don't do often, if you want the
document to last in PC Word.

Mac Word is simply very fragile. Treat it as such, and wait for Microsoft
to fix it.

Hope this helps

On 12/09/08 10:26 PM, in article 59b59...@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"i_lik...@officeformac.com" <i_lik...@officeformac.com> wrote:

--

[i_lik...@officeformac.com]

Hello John,

Wow, that was highly useful information. Thank you for the thorough assistance. Perhaps I wouldn't want to insert Photoshop TIFFs into Word 2008 tables (.doc files), if it can be avoided. I'll stick to BMP and PNG (as a secondary choice).

[John McGhie]

Sorry!! I left out an important fact: BMPs are HUGE!!

So you really HAVE to use "something else" if you are making a document that
is going to contain more than one or two pictures :-)

A full-page BMP at 600 dpi is about 807,840,000 bytes: it will wipe out your
whole hard disk :-)

TIFFs are the graphics industry's "preferred" format, because they lose
neither resolution nor colour. But they're big: even compressed they're
only about a tenth the size of a BMP, depending on what's in them.

PNG is a good choice in Word because it supports the maximum number of
colours Word can handle, and also does not remove any resolution. It's
about a 20th the size of a BMP.

A GIF sacrifices colours to preserve sharpness (good for line drawings and
screen shops). It's half the size of a PNG but supports only 256 colours.
Few screen-shots or line drawings contain more colours than that.

JPEG is the format of choice for photos. It sacrifices detail (sharpness)
to preserve colour. If you drag the JPEG "quality" slider down to about
half-way, that's about as small as you can get it without producing
noticeable artefacts (fringes...) and at that stage, a JPEG will be about
100th the size of the BMP.

However: Really large savings are possible if you warm up the trusty
graphics editor and start doing some cropping and down-sampling.

First, make a copy of the picture and remove from the image the parts you do
not need. Most sensible photographers shoot a picture a bit larger than
they think they will need: it's much easier to get the framing perfect in
the graphics editor later, than it is in the middle of a football crowd
going ballistic while the home team scores!

Now: re-size the picture to the size you actually want it to appear. Yeah,
I know, this requires thought and planning. Sorry... But it's really worth
it -- you end up with a small, fast, reliable document you can email
anywhere :-)

Until you get the hang of it, drop the image into the document where it
belongs and drag a corner until it looks right. Print it, and measure the
photo with a ruler. Now delete the picture from the document, open the
original in the graphics editor, and use its "Resize" command to set the
cropped picture to exactly the size you are going to use.

Always re-size before you re-sample: the resizing algorithm works better if
it has the maximum number of pixels to choose from.

Now: Do you REALLY need all those 600 dots per inch? Normally, "No". If
you are going out to a commercial colour printing press, "yes", which is why
they prefer TIFF. For ANYTHING else, 600 dpi is way over-kill.

For an office laser printer or a domestic inkjet, 300 is heaps if you are in
black and white. In colour, 150 dpi is fine. Going out to the web or other
on-screen display, there is no point in sending more than 96 dpi -- the
display device will simply throw them away when it gets them. And I defy
anyone to notice the difference (in colour!!) if you drop it down to 72 dpi.

OK, for the truly adventurous (and anyone else who can't get the damn thing
to email to your recipient because it's still too big...) you can reduce the
colour depth. Don't try this on a photo: the result is usually so
"artistic" most of us would call it disgusting. But for a line-drawing, you
can cut the colours way back from the standard "millions".

A good graphics editor will tell you how many colours are actually "in use"
in a graphic. If you set the colour depth to exactly that, and set the
palette to "adaptive" your pic is now as small as it can be. Chances are
that 800 megabyte monster is down to around 20 or 30 kb :-)

"Most people" don't know all this stuff. Many people think the software
should take care of all of this without them having to think. Some people
believe they "don't have time" to learn to do all this. Those of us who
have been in the industry 20 or 30 years sometimes wonder when they will
find the time to enjoy their lives...

"No", the software CAN'T do it for you, unless you are prepared to tell it
what you can afford to "lose" -- there are no free lunches, and no free
pixels. And if "nobody" does this stuff, your documents, the lateness of
the hour, and the elevation of your blood-pressure, will all grow
geometrically as you struggle with cranky, unreliable documents and frequent
crashes.

Ever wondered how it is that Word always seems to crash and lose your work
the day before your deadline? That's because that's when the document
finally has all the pictures in it, and you haven't down-sized them :-)

Hope this helps

On 14/09/08 6:49 PM, in article 59b59...@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"i_lik...@officeformac.com" <i_lik...@officeformac.com> wrote:

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.o

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac

Sydney, Australia. mailto:jo...@mcghie.name

[i_lik...@officeformac.com]

Yes, the BMPs I found are huge in file size. And I'm unsure how you knew I was scanning or rasterising PDF images at 600 dpi, but that's what I'm doing. As the TIFFs from my Mac are unreadable on any Windows version of Word, I will then stick to PNGs then. They seem to have a good balance between Mac/Windows compatibility and small file size.

As my document is intended for printing, I will stick to uncompressed format, although it is amazing what web-optimised Photoshop JPEGs can achieve in terms of file-size reduction.

And thank you so much John for your freely-given help. I need my dissertation to be free of corruptions!

[CyberTaz]

FWIW - I'm in total agreement with [almost] everything John laid out for
you... Although I do wish he'd get *dpi* and *ppi* straight :-)

However, [IMHO] for quality commercial output I'd go one major step further:
If the finished product needs to include more than 2 hi-res images don't
produce it in Word in the first place. Use a decent publishing app such as
QuarkXPress or InDesign to compose the final document & insert you finished
images there. You can still do your copy in Word if you wish & import it to
the pub document. InDesign in particular is very faithful about retaining
your Styles & other document attributes from the Word file.

As John pointed out, it takes a great deal of time & learning to handle such
projects in Word - and can still lead to enormous frustration because the
program is built on a foundation that truly doesn't support graphic content.
The abilities it *does* have are ones that have been "added on" over the
years & simply don't compare to programs designed for layout design
involving graphics intended for output to commercial press.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

On 9/15/08 4:31 AM, in article 59b59...@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,

[John McGhie]

{Giggle} Well, if you are rasterising at 600 dpi/ppi (shaddap, Bob!!) then
you will have a little "issue" with file size :-)

Windows can read any TIFF you like, provided that it a) Does not exceed
24-bit colour, and b) Is not compressed, or is compressed in LZW.

Any Windows machine that has a graphics application installed will be able
to handle 48-bit TIFF. But the secretary's machine in the front office is
unlikely to be one of those... Stick to RGB for peace and sanity...

And be careful of that Jones boy: he neglected to mention that it takes
YEARS of Learning to make a complex document in ANY application.

Ask him how long it took him to learn to drive Quark and InDesign!!

The problem is not the software, it's the job to be done. Old farts like me
that have the skills to produce long and complex documents at commercial
quality are getting very rare. It used to be that any secretary knew this
stuff: she had to, to do the Annual Report.

These days, they "outsource" the complex, high-value stuff, which means that
nobody in the company ever gets to work with industry professionals to
acquire the needed skills. If you don't work for a Graphics Design house
these days, you will never get the opportunity to learn to handle the big
stuff. {Sigh}

Unless you hang around in here :-) Our reason for being here is to pass on
the stuff that was freely handed to us, 30 or 40 years ago!

Cheers

On 15/09/08 6:31 PM, in article 59b59...@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"i_lik...@officeformac.com" <i_lik...@officeformac.com> wrote:

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:jo...@mcghie.name

[CyberTaz]

<snip>
On 9/16/08 10:58 PM, in article C4F6AF6A.193AC%jo...@mcghie.name, "John
McGhie" <jo...@mcghie.name> wrote:

> Well, if you are rasterising at 600 dpi/ppi

<snip>

Oh GREAT!!! So now you're gonna do *this* to reinforce & perpetuate further
the misconception that they're interchangeable. Be prepared for a sound
thrashing within the fortnight... And I'll not take jet lag into account ;-)

[John McGhie]

Hi Bob:

You know that Victory sign you just saw? Have half a one :-)

Cheers

On 17/09/08 8:04 PM, in article C4F6558E.42D80%onlygen...@com.cast.net,
"Bob Jones" <onlygen...@com.cast.net> wrote:

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac

[abuda...@gmail.com]

Ummmm I use an iPad app called Microsoft word which I use on iPad and for some reason it's says there is not enough space to print try and delete videos pictures etc but I have 1gb of scpace and 1.5 iCloud space. So please help me