Word 2013: Extremely slow saving and pasting plain text in long documents

Hi all,

I have been following this thread with interest, and struggling with this same problem, so let me report what I've done so far.

First, clean up:

• Deleted COM plug-ins
• Repair install

Then configuration changes:

• Disable Hardware Acceleration
• Remove internet from locations to save to
• Disable background saving

Results over the last 24 hours have been radically improved. I am working with a large and complicated document and so far response times have been much improved.

I thank Stefan Blum and others here who have tried to engage the community and find solutions to this issue. My guess is that it could be multiple issues at once, on two levels: first, other programs can cause bad behaviors in Word and vice-versa; second, there may be multiple configuration options in Word that must be changed to avoid this behavior.

I hope others continue to post their stories because in my experience, that is how debugging occurs: the user relates their configuration, the steps they took and the results they obtained, and the debugger tries to replicate the problem so they can fiddle with it and see if they can stop it from happening and/or understand what made it happen. For this reason, it is helpful for users to post their configuration, the process they used and exact results that occurred.

I am considering submitting as a test document an out-of-copyright longer text, marked up with styles in a hierarchical manner as this seemed to produce the greatest slowdown.

I tried this. It worked for a while and then saving took ages again. The only workaround that works for me is to disable background saves.

Here's what I found:

Original document with sections, footnotes, graphics and 500 pages of text saved from Word 2010, 1.51Mb in size

Save times

Saved in Word 2010 and 2013 compatability mode - 20 seconds

Document converted from 'compatability mode' to 2013 format - 2 minutes 30 seconds

Copied and pasted into a blank 2013 document - 33 seconds

Copied and pasted document with background saving turned off - 6 seconds

To turn off background saves use File > Options > Advanced > scroll to 'save' section and remove the check next to 'Allow background saves'.

Beware of the last option - turning off background saves - You'll have to save manually and it may cost you a lost document.

I found that a document saved from Word 2010 works fine so long as it's in 'compatibility mode'. If it's converted from that then the problem occurs. A 20 second save now takes 150 seconds. There's a simple answer. Open your document and use Ctrl A then Ctrl C to copy the entire text. Create a new blank document in Word 2013 and paste in the copied text. Save that and you'll find it saves quickly again.

No need to copy styles, footnotes, graphics or sections separately.

I tried this. It worked for a while and then saving took ages again. The only workaround that works for me is to disable background saves.

I found that a document saved from Word 2010 works fine so long as it's in 'compatibility mode'. If it's converted from that then the problem occurs. A 20 second save now takes 150 seconds. There's a simple answer. Open your document and use Ctrl A then Ctrl C to copy the entire text. Create a new blank document in Word 2013 and paste in the copied text. Save that and you'll find it saves quickly again.

No need to copy styles, footnotes, graphics or sections separately.

Hello again,

 Since having to disable automatic saves in order to make saving tolerable, I have noticed Word continues to save automatically. That's good, but quite the ridiculous situation I hope Microsoft addresses in an update.

Come on folks! It shouldn't be this difficult...