Office: Error Message Occurs When Using Extract Utility

ID: Q122209

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Office for Windows, versions 4.2c, 4.3c
Microsoft Office for Windows 95, versions 7.0, 7.0b

SYMPTOMS

When you use the Extract utility to manually extract files for one of the applications listed above, you may receive an error message similar to one of the following:

   Write protect error writing drive A
   Abort, Retry, Fail?

   ERROR: Not enough space for temporary file \esf2 while decompressing
   excel1.cab:
   524288 bytes needed

CAUSE

This problem occurs under the following conditions:

The current directory is low on available disk space
-or-
The current directory is write protected
-or-
The current directory is on a network drive, and you do not have the privileges required to write to this drive.
-AND-
The environment variable TMP is not set (Office 4.x only).

This behavior occurs because the Extract utility, EXTRACT.EXE, uses the environment variable TMP to determine where to write a temporary file while extracting files from the application's cabinet files. If this variable is not set, the Extract utility attempts to write the temporary file to the root directory of the current drive. If the current drive is read-only, (such as a network drive that you do not have privileges to write to, or a floppy disk drive that is write protected) or does not have enough available disk space for the temporary file, you receive an error message similar to the messages listed above and the file is not expanded.

When installing Microsoft Office for Windows 95, version 7.x, it is not necessary to set the TMP variable.

Note: The TMP environment variable should be set in addition to the TEMP environment variable.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem with the EXTRACT.EXE utility that ships with the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.

WORKAROUNDS

To avoid receiving these error messages when you use the Extract utility, do any of the following:

Change the current directory to a read-write drive that has plenty of available disk space, before you use the Extract utility. Note that the Extract utility allows you to use a full path to specify both the location of the files that you are extracting, and where to place the extracted files.
-or-
Set the TMP environment variable to a valid read-write drive. You can do this by adding a command similar to the following to the AUTOEXEC.BAT file:
```
      SET TMP=C:\TEMP
```

For additional information, please see the following article(s) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q120006
   TITLE     : XL5C: How to Copy Files from Cabinets on DMF-Formatted Disks

Additional query words: 4.00c 4.20c 4.30c 5.00c 6.00c errmsg diamond rights word6

Version           : 1.10 7.00
Platform          : WINDOWS

Last Reviewed: November 17, 1998