Word 2004 extremely slow with equations on page

[Matthew Stevens]

On a page with a dozen equations (many just a single letter, because the
author didn't know any better), Word 2004 runs like treacle. The
spinning colour wheel spins for around 10 seconds every time I type
something. This is maddening - a short job is taking me hours.

The sluggishness seems to be related to the number of equations: as the
number comes down (as I delete them), the speed goes up.

G4, OS X 10.4.6, 640 MB RAM, Word 2004 11.2.

Is this a known problem? Any solutions?

 

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

Hi Matthew:

Yeah, it's a known problem. You're a bit light on for memory for "serious"
work in Tiger with Word: go up to a gig, it may make a bit of difference.
Quit (not just minimise) all other applications and you'll get a useful
speed boost.

But the real problem is that Word handles object embedding rather badly on
the Mac. If you do not need to update those equations, cut them and
Paste>Special as Pictures. Speed will improve dramatically.

If you're only interested in the text, Word in Normal few: speed improves by
an order of magnitude.

Hope this helps

On a page with a dozen equations (many just a single letter, because the
author didn't know any better), Word 2004 runs like treacle. The
spinning colour wheel spins for around 10 seconds every time I type
something. This is maddening - a short job is taking me hours.

The sluggishness seems to be related to the number of equations: as the
number comes down (as I delete them), the speed goes up.

G4, OS X 10.4.6, 640 MB RAM, Word 2004 11.2.

Is this a known problem? Any solutions?

--

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