"Word is repaginating" slowly

I

isaackoi2

Hi,

I'm being driven slowly insane by the "Word is repaginating" message
appearing whilst I work on a Word document which is now around 1,500
long (all text, in tables) and would be very grateful for any help. I
hope this is an appropriate question for this group.

When I move to any of the couple of thousand endnotes the screen pauses
for anything from a few seconds to a few minutes during which time the
"Word is repaginating" message appears at the bottom of the screen. All
of the page numbers (from 1 to the page upon which the end note
appears, i.e. up to 1,500) are counted through.

At work (using Microsoft Word 2003) on a fairly good computer bought in
late 2004, this can take 10-20 seconds each time I move to an endnote.
At home (using Microsoft Word 2002) on a computer bought in mid-2004,
this can take minutes.

Given that I want to make this document available freely on the
Internet for other people to us, I'd keen to resolve this rather
irritating problem...

I've done a few searches on the Internet on the "Word is repaginating"
message and tried:
(1) cutting and pasting all the material into a new document - no
difference;
(2) cutting and pasting all the material apart from the last few
paragraph marks into a new document - no joy;
(3) changing the view from Page Layout to Normal - but this does not
reflect how the document will look when I print it out...
(4) converting the document into a .rtf file - but this loses all the
formatting, including the hundreds of tables that make up the document
and help organise the information within it...

The only other comments I've had from people I've raised this with are
that:
(a) I shouldn't have used a Microsoft product (or at least Word) to
create such a long document - but after 2 years work on the relevant
document I'm reluctant to change now..., or
(b) I should split the document into smaller bits - which reduces the
ease of searching the entire document and making global replacements.

The whole document is about 30Mb in size (which is another issue
entirely...), and about 3Mb when zipped. In case it helps in giving
any advice, I'm including a link below to a zipped file containing a
short extract (about 75 pages) from that document that I recently made
available on the Internet:
http://tinyurl.com/9rskk

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance,

Isaac Koi
 
D

Dawn Crosier

Word does have trouble building very large tables. One thing that you
can do is to split your tables into smaller tables. Therefore, Word
will not have to *build* the long columns of information. If that is
not an acceptable alternative, then you can change the font
temporarily to Draft Font to speed it up. You need to be in Normal
view then select Tools, Options from the menu, choose the View tab and
check the Draft font box.

This page describes more options which will enable you to improve
performance: http://word.mvps.org/faqs/tblsfldsfms/FastTables.htm

--
Dawn Crosier
Microsoft MVP
"Education Lasts a Lifetime"

This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies and
questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn as well.
 
I

isaackoi2

Many thanks Dawn for the comments and (particularly) the helpful link
to the further detailed suggestions.

I'll work my way through the various options and report back for the
benefit of anyone else that has this problem in the future.

As you anticipated as a possibility, splitting the main big table
(which accounts for about 300 pages out the 1,500 total) is not an
acceptable option. I want users to be able to sort the entries into
whatever order suits their research purpose.

My first impression using the option of working in Normal mode using
the "draft Font" is that this certainly speeds things up considerably,
but at the cost of the document not looking the same as it will when
printed (particularly in relation to the endnotes etc). However, it
looks like this is the best option to reduce my irritation with working
on this document...

Thanks again for the helpful comments,

Isaac

Dawn said:
Word does have trouble building very large tables. One thing that you
can do is to split your tables into smaller tables. Therefore, Word
will not have to *build* the long columns of information. If that is
not an acceptable alternative, then you can change the font
temporarily to Draft Font to speed it up. You need to be in Normal
view then select Tools, Options from the menu, choose the View tab and
check the Draft font box.
This page describes more options which will enable you to improve
performance: http://word.mvps.org/faqs/tblsfldsfms/FastTables.htm
Dawn Crosier
Microsoft MVP
"Education Lasts a Lifetime"
<snip>
 

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