Hi Jim:
For Word to slow down in a document of only 100 pages indicates that the
internal structure of that document is very sick indeed. You really need to
clean it up. Unfortunately, there is no "good" way to do this.
The first thing I would try is to split up the tables while you are working
on the document. Just use Table>Split Table to split each table so it
covers fewer that 20 pages. I would also ensure that you have accepted all
tracked changes in the document: a large number of complex edits stored as
tracked changes will make even a medium document like this slow down badly.
I am afraid you need to put a bit of work into this. The good news is that
if you work at it, you CAN fix this document. The bad news is that if you
don't, the document will eventually refuse to open. The corruptions that
you have are most likely in the tables or text boxes, so a standard "Maggie"
(copy all but last paragraph mark to a new document) will not fix it.
You can "try" using File>Save As... To save the file to RTF. Close the
document and open the RTF version. Save that as a new file name. This
"sometimes" works, but I have never had any success with it, because RTF
usually makes such a good copy of the document that it copies the problem.
What "will" fix it is to save the document to HTML (Web Page). Close, Open
the Web Page version and save that to a new file name as a .doc format.
This "will" clear the corruption, but I think you will have to re-insert
your graphics, because they will all be resampled into JPEG on the way out
to a web page.
Note: Use Save As Web Page, not Web Page (Filtered) or "Save only display
information". Any kind of filtering will remove the information Word needs
to reconstruct a document from the web page. And don't try this in Word
X -- it's XML is not complex enough to save all of the complex document
features to a web page.
When editing complex documents, avoid drag-and-drop. Use Cut and Paste
instead: it is less likely to cause these problems.
Hope this helps
--
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 4 1209 1410
