URGENT: Table format slows down document in Word 2003

[Carole Sigouin, Sr. Technical Writer]

Would you have a solution to this problem? This 135-page document (2.5 Mb)
contains 2 large tables designed for a Glossary. It slows down tremendously
every time a person wants open it, work with it or save it (it spools and
analyzes the document endlessly...).

We're converted it as a Tab Delimeter format for ease of use but, it is
difficult to read and not easy to maintain. Would you have any suggestions or
this is a limitation in Word, not being able to handle and compute large
tables?

Carole

 

[Jay Freedman]

Would you have a solution to this problem? This 135-page document
(2.5 Mb) contains 2 large tables designed for a Glossary. It slows
down tremendously every time a person wants open it, work with it or
save it (it spools and analyzes the document endlessly...).

We're converted it as a Tab Delimeter format for ease of use but, it
is difficult to read and not easy to maintain. Would you have any
suggestions or this is a limitation in Word, not being able to handle
and compute large tables?

Carole

Word has always had trouble handling extremely long tables -- the article
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/FastTables.htm was written about 6
or 7 years ago, and not much has changed with respect to the items listed
there.

Split the tables into segments that are no more than 5 to 10 pages long, and
keep the document that way as long as it's being edited. You might want to
recombine the tables in a copy of the document in order to print it with
proper page breaks.

As an example, I've used Word tables to prepare an index/glossary from page
proofs of a textbook, generating more than 8000 table rows covering 185
pages. By never allowing any single table to exceed about 50 rows, I was
able to work on it with no noticeable slowdown.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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[Carole Sigouin, Sr. Technical Writer]

Thank you,

I'm into 50 pages and the file is growing... I'll let you know the outcome
when I'm done on Monday.

Carole

 

[macropod]

Hi Carole,

For a large table, you might find Excel is better suited to what you're doing. If need be, you can either copy & paste the Excel
table into Word after you've finished editing, or create a link between it and the Word document.

 

[Carole Sigouin]

Thank you Jay:

We have broken the document into smaller tables (not exceeding 50 rows each)
and it worked.

It would be more effective to have Microsoft build a more powerful Word
application that would enable unlimited amount of rows using the Repeat
Header rows on each page and not causing the application to analyze and
taking time to handle simple navigation, changes, etc.

Please let know of this at Microsoft and this limitation is causing a lot of
headaches to a lot of my clients.

Note that Adobe Frame Maker has that capability of handling large tables,
and Word does not!

Thank you,

Carole Sigouin
Sr. Technical Writer

 

[Carole Sigouin]

Hello Macropod:

To convert to Excel was not a good idea, since we were looking at delivering
an editable file in Word to many people who are more comfortable using Word
rather than Excel.

We have broken the table into smaller 50-row tables and it worked.

This is a drawback from Word that should be investigated. Would it be
possible to have Microsoft build a more powerful Word application that can
handle this kind of capability that Adobe FrameMaker has?

This table issue of having to break the table and not being able to apply
the Header Row Repeat on each page (that causes the application to slow down)
is causing a headache to a lot of my clients.

Adobe FrameMaker has that kind of capability where you wouldn't have to deal
with this kind of issue.

Carole Sigouin

Hi Carole,

For a large table, you might find Excel is better suited to what you're doing. If need be, you can either copy & paste the Excel
table into Word after you've finished editing, or create a link between it and the Word document.

--
Cheers
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]

Would you have a solution to this problem? This 135-page document (2.5 Mb)
contains 2 large tables designed for a Glossary. It slows down tremendously
every time a person wants open it, work with it or save it (it spools and
analyzes the document endlessly...).

We're converted it as a Tab Delimeter format for ease of use but, it is
difficult to read and not easy to maintain. Would you have any suggestions or
this is a limitation in Word, not being able to handle and compute large
tables?

Carole