MAC Catalina and Microsoft office

Thank you Faith. So good to know there is some help out there. Much appreciated.

All updates re your first link were performed earlier today and the problem still persisted after that

Re your second link - Apple support have gone through this with me in the last two weeks - safe boot and followed by reinstalling - problem still persisted after this. 

I believe it might be linked to Microsoft Office in some way .... specifically Word - I should be able to save every document once I have amended but cannot always do this in Word on a USB. Sometimes it lets me other times it doesn't. But I can save to desktop. Tried a new USB and same thing happened with that. The computer can also freeze unexpectedly and I lose work. When I called Apple Support today they suggested ruling out an issue with Microsoft first.

Many thanks for the advice so far. I'm not really sure what else I can do. I haven't had the Mac that long

Hi

It sounds like the file system on your USB drive is messed up.

Copy any files you want to save from your drive, then use Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities) to erase and reformat the USB drive. Saving directly to USB drives is always dicey because you have to have at a LOT of free space on the drive or you get file corruption. If a USB drive is more than 1/2 full, expect problems.

Thank you Jim. 

I will try that today. A few months back when the problem occurred i bought a new USB which now has only a couple of docs on it. Apple support helped me to format this to Mac the other day but problem persists. I never knew that saving to USB on a mac would cause such problems.  Thank you for your advice - much appreciated

Hi

It's not a good idea to save or open files directly to a USB flash drive on Mac or Windows. They don't seem to be as reliable as other kinds of media. There are size constraints and speed timing issues, as they tend to be small and slow.   You should expect any file you work on to consume more than double its size in hidden files as you work on it while it is on a USB drive. Because read/write is very slow to a flash drive, your apps can seem sluggish.

Thank you so much - I'm starting to understand a bit more now..

So to ask another question - what is the best type of media I can save work to as i work on several different PCs and need to bring something similar to USB size with me? I'm not used to using anything else so not sure what is out there and what may avoid a similar situation occurring

And just out of interest - would working on a document opened from a file on a USB have caused my Mac to go to blank black screen - on several occasions?  From your responses I can now understand why it may not save, but I have had several instances of complete shutdown

Many thanks for any advice

Hi

Please verify your file system is OK. Do the following:

Restart your Mac, then go to the Applications > Utilities folder and run Disk Utility. Have it verify your startup volume and all attached volumes.

Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

Next, be sure your Office apps are up to date.

Download a copy of the current version of AutoUpdate from this link, install and then run AutoUpdate to bring your installation to current update level, then restart your Mac. If the updater does not open automatically after download, double-click the downloaded .pkg file. Click this link to download the updater. The update is free.

https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=830196

Thank you. I have done this. In the meantime I have also bought Passport for Mac. I tried to save a word document straight to it but it came up with "Word cannot save or create this file. Make sure that the disk you want to save the file on is not full, write-protected or damaged." 

So I am stuck - first aid etc all done and I still cannot save to an external drive when creating a word document.  I can save to desktop but no external drive. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't... 

Many thanks for your advice. 

Hi

Memory cards are small, fast and can store many gigs worth of information. I consider them to be a very reliable external way of storing files in a portable format. A card reader is inexpensive.

Because there is a risk that you could lose the card, be sure to save locally, too. Same advice for a flash drive.