Large table eventually hangs Word

[Alan4297]

I use Word 2002 with Win XP, 11.8GB free space, 504MB RAM.

I have a Word file with a single table over 44 pages. (We need a single
table, because it's a "working table" that can be sorted by columns,
depending on what info is needed.)

This table eventually hangs Word. The CPU usage in Task Manager is 99%.

I tried exporting to an RTF file, then re-importing to a clean file.

We can't maintain the table in Excel, because many of the table cells
contain small tables.

I recall that scrolling speed in Word 6 reduced to almost zero in a file
containing either many tables, or one large table. But Word 6 never actually
hung.

Word does not hang even with many files open, as long as the maverick file
is not open.

Please advise.

Regards,
Alan

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Alan,

If the Task Manager shows a high CPU usage, the table is likely set to
"AutoFit to contents" or "AutoFit to Window".
Setting the table to fixed column width might solve that.

You might want to turn off background spell/grammar checking, too.

If the CPU usage still is high, and you know some VBA, you could look at
Application.Tasks to try and try to figure out what's responsible for the
CPU usage: likely some background task running in Word.

I use a large table (12 columns, about 80 pages, 7 pt font) nearly each day,
and it slows Word a bit, sometimes leading to hangs and crashes.
There's not too much that can be done about that, except splitting the table
(which isn't an option in my case since I need to be able to search columns,
sort)... unless the MS programmers try to optimize the performance of large
tables, or computers in general become a lot faster.

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Alan4297]

Hi Klaus,

I have tried your suggestions of using Fixed Width in tables (although there
is no way of knowing what had been set previously, because the current option
does not get checked). I have set spelling and grammar checking to Off.

Things seem to be OK so far.

I can bring in my VB in a Nutshell book tomorrow.

Thanks for your help.

Regards,
Alan