Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Each and every program is likely to have its own message, and they will vary from being helpful and supportive to arcane and cryptic.

When an application like Microsoft Word tries to save a file to disk, and the disk is full, any message displayed on screen comes from the application itself. 

If you receive an error message

Microsoft Word says 'Word cannot save or create this file. The disk may be full or write-protected' and goes on to suggest some of the things you might try to fix the problem.

Another program puts up a box saying 'This action could not be completed, because an error occurred (MacOS Error code -1425)', and invites you to press a button marked 'OK'. Clearly, this isn't okay!

The Finder itself usually displays a helpful message, but the common thread under these circumstances is that there is a problem in either saving or making a copy of your file. 

Please review the instructions for reviewing your files and folders for some ideas about how to create disk space for your files.

If you are not able to make space to save the file yourself, contact Faculty Computing for assistance.