XL97: "The Disk Is Full" Error Copying Very Large Worksheet (185100)

SYMPTOMS

In Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows, if you copy a worksheet, Microsoft Excel may stop responding. If you wait, you receive the following error message

The disk is full.

and the worksheet is not copied.

CAUSE

This problem may occur if the following conditions are true:

The worksheet you are copying contains a very large amount of information (over a million cells, for example). -and-
You are running Microsoft Excel 97 under Microsoft Windows 95.

NOTE: The problem does not occur when you run Microsoft Excel 97 under Microsoft Windows NT. The problem also does not occur when you move a worksheet.

WORKAROUND

If this problem occurs, you can still copy the contents of the worksheet, and then paste them into a new worksheet. To select the entire worksheet, press CTRL+a or CTRL+SHIFT+SPACE or click the Select All button in the upper-left corner of the worksheet.

Note that if you use this method to create a copy of a worksheet, some elements of the worksheet may not be copied, including:

Defined names
Macros assigned to the worksheet

You may need to manually recreate these items or copy them from the original worksheet. Note that charts copied from one worksheet to another may still refer to the original worksheet.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the versions of Microsoft Excel listed at the beginning of this article.