How do I speed up Word?

[Richard Robertson]

I'm using Word 2002, Windows XP Professional, have about 50 gigabytes of free
hard drive space, 1.5 gigabytes of RAM and an AMD Athlon 2200+ CPU. I've
removed any add-ins to word I can find.
I'm working with a 20 mb file; text only, no pictures. I also need to have
a second file open of about 115 kb. When I first open the large file it
takes 2 or 3 minutes before I can get much movement out of the cursor. In
editing the large file I often use "Find and Replace," but that sometimes
switches me over to the small file or seems to hang up between the two files.
I've uninstalled Word and reinstalled it and still have the same problems.
I've tried the file with Open Office Writer and the speed problems go away,
but it's can't meet my needs in terms of "Find and Replace" or macros.
Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[macropod]

Hi Richard,

If your documents uses lots of some cross-referencing and calculating
fields, and sometimes just a few of them in the header/footer, that could be
contributing to your problem. For example, STYLEREF fields can make large
documents very slow.

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/212054/en-us for more details.

In versions before Word 2002, the FILENAME field was another culprit. A
design change in Microsoft Word 2002 and later means the FILENAME field
doesn't automatically update when you open a document, permitting it to open
more quickly.

For maximum speed, you could use 'Normal' view, turn off 'background
repagination' and 'update automatic links at open'.

Cheers

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

OK, let's assume the problem is that the internal structure of that document
is massively complex.

How many tracked changes do you have unresolved in the document? On a copy
of the document, Accept All changes -- this often dramatically speeds things
up.

Then I would "Maggie" the document: Create a new blank document, then
carefully copy everything EXCEPT the last paragraph mark and paste into the
new document. That will clear any collected trash from the document
properties and may dramatically speed things up.

At 20 MB of text-only, you are getting close to the theoretical limit of
Word 2002. Let's turn off some of the power-hungry features.

First: Work in Normal View. Normal View is specially designed for this: it
is a low-fidelity view designed to reduce the amount of work Word has to do
when working in a document.

Turn off Active Word Count, Keep Track of Formatting, the table of contents
and any dynamic content from your headers and footers. You can also save a
little power by turning off spelling and grammar checking.

But I don't think that's your problem: I think the complexity of a
heavily-edited document is the problem and that will go away of you Maggie
it.

To reduce this problem in the future, turn Tools>Options>Save>Always make
backup copy ON so Word always cleans its document structure up on each save.

Cheers

I'm using Word 2002, Windows XP Professional, have about 50 gigabytes of free
hard drive space, 1.5 gigabytes of RAM and an AMD Athlon 2200+ CPU. I've
removed any add-ins to word I can find.
I'm working with a 20 mb file; text only, no pictures. I also need to have
a second file open of about 115 kb. When I first open the large file it
takes 2 or 3 minutes before I can get much movement out of the cursor. In
editing the large file I often use "Find and Replace," but that sometimes
switches me over to the small file or seems to hang up between the two files.
I've uninstalled Word and reinstalled it and still have the same problems.
I've tried the file with Open Office Writer and the speed problems go away,
but it's can't meet my needs in terms of "Find and Replace" or macros.
Any help greatly appreciated.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[richardlwilson76]

Try third-party speeder tool:

http://www.download.com/Speed-Gear/3000-2121-10290541.html?tag=lst-0-1