Word 2008 Performance

[jor]

iMac, 2 gigs, lots of HD space

I MUST use MS Word 2008 for a project I'm working on but it is driving
me crazy. I've got the OS10.5.6 and all of the MS updates but this
thing is a real dog. I've read all the posts about start up and slow
editing but I'm having trouble even with mouse selection like File/
Open Recent. This takes 3 or 4 sconds with the beachball. Same with
clicking on Help. I've turned off all the unnecessary background stuff
but it's still a drag. Any fixes to this or should I just grin and
bear it? Thanks.
jor

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

I'm having trouble even with mouse selection like File/
Open Recent. This takes 3 or 4 sconds with the beachball.

Try the following:
- trash the preferences, they might be corrupted and creating this mess
- resolve duplicates in FontBook and relaunch Word
- if you can, remove all postscript fonts from your Mac. I was having
troubles as well and this made a *tremendous* difference.
I didn't really need these fonts so I don't miss them. Over time I tend
to accumulate fonts without ever really taking care of cleaning all that
up :-\

Corentin

 

[jor]

Try the following:
- trash the preferences, they might be corrupted and creating this mess
- resolve duplicates in FontBook and relaunch Word
- if you can, remove all postscript fonts from your Mac. I was having
troubles as well and this made a *tremendous* difference.
I didn't really need these fonts so I don't miss them. Over time I tend
to accumulate fonts without ever really taking care of cleaning all that
up :-\

Corentin

--
          --- Office:Mac MVP  http://www.cortig.net/wordpress/---
       http://www.mvps.org      -    http://mvp.support..microsoft.com
    MVPs are not MS employees    -    Les MVP ne travaillent pas pour MS
 Remove "NoSpam" to e-mail me    -      Retirez "NoSpam" pourm'écrire

Well, these sound like good ideas but how does one trash Preferences
and resolve the duplicates. Guess I'm an idiot. Thanks.
jor

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Well, these sound like good ideas but how does one trash Preferences
and resolve the duplicates. Guess I'm an idiot. Thanks.

:-D
Don't worry, it's OK if you don't know.
For the duplicates, launch /Applications/Font Book.
The application will lkist all your active font.

In the menus, you can find a few interesting commands:
- you can select and activate or deactivate a font (don't deactivate the
Fonts Office installs).
- you can look for corrupted fonts (replace them with a clean copy if
you have one or consider deactivating or trashing them).
- you can Resolve Duplicates. This command will find all duplicates and
disabled the most outdated copy of the font.
That solves a LOT of font conflict issues.


For the Preferences, you can go to ~/Library/Preferences (the one in
your user account) and look for com.microsoft.word preference files
there, or in the Microsoft subfolder.
Simply trash them and relaunch Word. You'll have to reset the
preferences the way you like them of course, but I believe it's well
worth it.

Corentin

 

[jor]

:-D
Don't worry, it's OK if you don't know.
For the duplicates, launch /Applications/Font Book.
The application will lkist all your active font.

In the menus, you can find a few interesting commands:
- you can select and activate or deactivate a font (don't deactivate the
Fonts Office installs).
- you can look for corrupted fonts (replace them with a clean copy if
you have one or consider deactivating or trashing them).
- you can Resolve Duplicates. This command will find all duplicates and
disabled the most outdated copy of the font.
That solves a LOT of font conflict issues.

For the Preferences, you can go to ~/Library/Preferences (the one in
your user account) and look for com.microsoft.word preference files
there, or in the Microsoft subfolder.
Simply trash them and relaunch Word. You'll have to reset the
preferences the way you like them of course, but I believe it's well
worth it.

Corentin

--
          --- Office:Mac MVP  http://www.cortig.net/wordpress/---
       http://www.mvps.org      -    http://mvp.support..microsoft.com
    MVPs are not MS employees    -    Les MVP ne travaillent pas pour MS
 Remove "NoSpam" to e-mail me    -      Retirez "NoSpam" pourm'écrire

Excellent! Thanks a million. I'll give it a try and post results.
jor

 

[jor]

Excellent! Thanks a million. I'll give it a try and post results.
jor

Tried both these fixes - No dice. Blew up Offfice 2008 after saving
the Entourage database and reinstalled it. Repaired permissions on the
HD too. Same crappy performance. Wish I could simply forgo using this
MS product but I guess I'll just live with it and grit my teeth.
jor

 

[CyberTaz]

Sorry to burst your anti-MS bubble , but neither of the operations you
refer to -- File services & accessing Help -- are Word or Office
functions... at least not entirely. Both of those actions rely on resources
outside of the application. Specifically, OS X for file management, your
browser & your internet connection for the Help response.

Since you indicate that you're still running OS X 10.5.6 it would be a good
idea to update it first to the newly released 10.5.7 using the Combo Update
you'll find here:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosx_updates/macosx1057comboupdate.html

Although it may sound like a lot, 2 gigs of RAM really isn't all that much
in today's systems. You might also consider what other apps & processes may
be running -- especially any utilities or "haxies" that might inhibit
performance. Try logging into your account while holding the Shift key &
then see if the Word problems persist. If there's an improvement it's a
clear indication that something external of Word/Office is responsible for
the issues.

You might also try running Word in a new user account to see if the same
behavior occurs. If not it suggests some degree of corruption with the
original account.

--
HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
Office:Mac MVP

Excellent! Thanks a million. I'll give it a try and post results.
jor

Tried both these fixes - No dice. Blew up Offfice 2008 after saving
the Entourage database and reinstalled it. Repaired permissions on the
HD too. Same crappy performance. Wish I could simply forgo using this
MS product but I guess I'll just live with it and grit my teeth.
jor

 

[Gary]

Jor, as Corentin mentioned, I would also look at the font issue. Word
scans through EVERY font on your system while it is loading up, and
will not let you do anything until that process is complete.

The oder of font scanning is:

~/Library/Fonts (where "~" is your home directory and where, typically
you install your own fonts here)

:Library/Fonts (where 3rd party software install their fonts to make
sure all users have access to the fonts, as well as some system
required fonts)

:System Folder/Fonts (DO NOT UNDER AND CIRCUMSTANCES TOUCH THESE FONTS.
Doing so may make your system unstable and cause a system crash)

Start by putting ALL the fonts in the user directory in a another
folder (say, on the desktop). If you have several hundred fonts, that
will dramatically slow the launch of Word, as well as every other app
on your system). Also, if even one font is corrupt, that will hang
Word while it retries to verify the bad font)

Here is a link to what the default fonts are for Leopard. Do not touch
these fonts, whether they are in the System Folder or the the
:Library/Fonts folder:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1642

Also, here is a link to how Office installs on a Mac
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948736

Here is another link on troubleshooting font issues.
http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/bad_font.html

Anyway, after I cleaned up my fonts, Word 2008 launches in less than a
minute, even on my G3 500Mhz Powerbook.

Good Luck

 

[John McGhie]

Well, you can put up with it if you like, but there is a problem there.
Word 2008 performs quite reasonably in documents less than about a thousand
pages, so the problem is somewhere on your machine

Corentin has given you just the first bits of a long list of things we need
to investigate.

The fact that the Entourage database blew up is not a good sign: it may well
be worth your doing a complete Remove and Replace using the Office Remover
tool, before you go any further.

I am wondering whether you might have "migrated" that Office installation
from another computer? That's a well-known source of performance problems.

The other thing is that you have not mentioned your update level of Office.
The performance problems you are describing make me suspect that you have
never put in the Microsoft updates for the product: performance improved
quite a bit in version 12.1.0.

Also: run Activity Monitor and have a look to see how much free memory you
have. On this iBook, I currently have about 680 MB of free memory: while
that's plenty for handling email and surfing he web, it's going to (DOES!!)
slow down badly if I start working with lots of applications on a large
project.

Try those things, then come back: we next need to investigate whether it
could be the "document" you are working on. Documents full of tracked
changes will get very slow.

And as a friend of mine just discovered, an "iMac" really is not appropriate
for large projects. They're just a laptop turned on their side, and they're
great machines for home use, but they don't have the grunt needed to tackle
large and complex documents.

Hope this helps

Tried both these fixes - No dice. Blew up Offfice 2008 after saving
the Entourage database and reinstalled it. Repaired permissions on the
HD too. Same crappy performance. Wish I could simply forgo using this
MS product but I guess I'll just live with it and grit my teeth.
jor

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

Tried both these fixes - No dice.

Did you also try removing PostScripts fonts from your system (assuming
you can live without them)??
That's what affected Word preformances the *most* on my Mac.

If none of these fairly simply trick did not work, then, as John said,
there is probably something deeper that needs to be investigated :-\

John gives you quite a few hints in his post,

Corentin

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi John;

I interpreted this:

"Blew up Offfice 2008 after saving the Entourage database and reinstalled
it."

to mean that the *OP* "blew up Office" as in ripping it out by the short
hairs after backing up the DB, then re-installed as opposed to the DB
blowing up... but it is a rather ambiguous statement Even if I'm right
it suggests that Remove Office wasn't used so it stands to reason that there
was no change -- and may even compound the problems as you well know.