I've heard of a guy with a 32MB document that ran well on an Intel Pentium 4
with only 512MB Ram. If you are having issues, then your software may be
somehow limited by your hardware and available Ram memory. More likely,
though, is a problem with your document.
At the end of your document there is a section of hidden code that has
tracked each revision/save, conversion, link, etc. Especially in older
versions of Office, this code can become unstable and can often corrupt a
large document over time.
You can and should try to transfer your document to a new file. There is a
particular procedure that has to be followed so that you don't also cut &
paste the hidden code:
1) Open the document and hit CTRL-END at the same time (This will take you
to the end of the typed text, but before the hidden code)
2) Then you want to hit CTRL-SHIFT-HOME which will select all the text in
the document
3) Just use copy, open a new document and paste it in there. Make sure you
are saving the document locally on the C: drive for best performance.
You'll notice that the size of your document should decrease significantly.
Now let's talk images:
1) Don't paste images—insert them. Select Insert » Picture » From File...
Browse to the location of the image, then select the image file and click
Insert (or simply double-click the file).
2) Image files are available in a number of different formats, such as
bitmaps, jpegs, gifs and others, each of which have advantages and
disadvantages. The least efficient of these formats is bitmap. Bitmap images
are very large in filesize and are low in detail, but they are also the
favoured format of Microsoft Windows and Office. So whenever an image is
copied to the computer's clipboard and pasted straight into Microsoft Word,
the image is pasted as a bitmap—regardless of the file format of the original
image. This results in a much larger Word document than necessary, especially
if there are more than a few images pasted in this way. Instead of
copy-pasting, save the images to disk in one of the other formats (gif, png
or jpeg) and insert them.
3) Compress your images. Even when an image is inserted into Word, it may
still be an inefficient, large file. Right click on one of your images, then
click on Format Picture-> Picture-> Compress-> make sure you select "All
Pictures in Document", and under "Options" click on both "Compress Pictures"
and "Delete Cropped Areas of Pictures".
4) The way to put in lots of images with the least size hit is to LINK to
the picture located outside of your document. For example, {INCLUDEPICTURE
"FileName" [Switches ]} inserts a specified graphic. To automate the process
of inserting an INCLUDEPICTURE field, point to Picture on the Insert menu,
click From File, click the arrow next to the Insert button, and then click
Link to File.
Miscellaneous stuff:
1) Don't save versions. When saving a document, Microsoft Word has the
ability to save it not only in its current state but also in all previous
states. The problem with this is that every different version saved takes up
disk space, leading to a file that quickly snowballs and takes a long time to
open and save.
2) Turn off Fast Save. Word has a Fast Save feature which is designed to
speed up the file save process. This feature saves only the changes to a
document rather than the full state of the document. Unfortunately, it also
ensures that the filesize quickly grows larger than necessary. Do not allow
Fast Saves, and if you have, turn it off.
3) Convert embedded objects, s.a. Excel tables, into images.
4) Convert the document to RTF. Word documents which are edited over an
extended period of time (measured in months and years) have a tendency to
gather a large amount of unnecessary code. This code can be removed by
converting the document to a format which is simpler than Word document
format, then re-converting it to Word format.
Follow these steps and your document should fare well!
Good luck,
Al
