I am using the latest Word 2013 RC in German. Allthough I am very pleased with the overall performance and features of this new version, I ran into some very annoying problems, that didn't exist with the latest Word 2010. These should be easy to reproduce: Take a long document (*.docx) with at least 100 pages and try to save it. This takes forever - I can see the progress bar filling up slowly. It takes at least 10-20 seconds to save. During that process I cannot do anything within Word - not even scroll smoothly. It slows down to the point of almost freezing up. I didn't have this problem with Word 2010 on the same system. Take that same document (>100 pages) and try to copy&paste some text (for example out of Firefox) and paste it as plain text - this takes at least 1 to 2 seconds. I didn't have any kind of delay with Word 2010. Word 2013 seems to work ok with *.doc files - it's still slower than Word 2010 a lot faster than saving *.docx files. I have no problems whatsoever with short documents. Can anyone confirm these problems with Word 2013 RC?

The weirdest thing happened at my end. The "bad" document was one that I had been editing on another machine, in WinXP and Word 2007, then brought over to my laptop which is Win8 and Word 2013. When I received a new document and opened it exclusively on my laptop the problem seemed to clear up. However. I just did the update to Win8.1 and am about halfway into the document I'm editing (a novel, about 66K words) and the lag is starting to take effect again. Has anyone else noticed problems with Office after updating Windows to 8.1? Thanks! I will be contacting Microsoft Support via Twitter (I find the Microsoft site itself to be virtually un-navigable) and sending them a link to this conversation. Maybe then someone will actually, you know, FIX THE PROBLEM so that we don't have to go rooting around in the background to try and slap together a solution.

I did a clean install to a new Windows 8 PC and got the slow save problem. Endured it for a few weeks and then Goggled this thread and am now reverting to the 1997-2003 format - solves the problem. Clearly an astonishing bug for long documents with footnotes. And no solution from Microsoft. Amazing.

Hmmm, I'm actually received the manuscript as a .doc file and have been working in Compatibility Mode the entire time. A little nervous about converting it to .docx. Are you saying you editing it as a .doc and then sent it back as a .docx? Or did you work on it, save it, convert it, and then convert it back? Thanks very much for the response, by the way.

Hi! I too am an editor and I feel your pain. This happens to me in some documents that are in the .docx format for files with more that 15 pages or so. Like you, I tried all the usual suggestions. However, the only thing that made to problem go away was saving the file as a Word 97 document (.doc) then converting it back to .docx before returning the completed file to the client. I was nervous about possible loss of formatting and issues relating to the clients tables and layout that might have arisen, however, there have been no problems so far.

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

Anonymous

I am using the latest Word 2013 RC in German. Allthough I am very pleased with the overall performance and features of this new version, I ran into some very annoying problems, that didn't exist with the latest Word 2010. These should be easy to reproduce:

Take a long document (*.docx) with at least 100 pages and try to save it. This takes forever - I can see the progress bar filling up slowly. It takes at least 10-20 seconds to save. During that process I cannot do anything within Word - not even scroll smoothly. It slows down to the point of almost freezing up. I didn't have this problem with Word 2010 on the same system.
Take that same document (>100 pages) and try to copy&paste some text (for example out of Firefox) and paste it as plain text - this takes at least 1 to 2 seconds. I didn't have any kind of delay with Word 2010.
Word 2013 seems to work ok with *.doc files - it's still slower than Word 2010 a lot faster than saving *.docx files.

I have no problems whatsoever with short documents. Can anyone confirm these problems with Word 2013 RC?

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Anonymous

2013-10-21T16:43:45+00:00

The weirdest thing happened at my end. The "bad" document was one that I had been editing on another machine, in WinXP and Word 2007, then brought over to my laptop which is Win8 and Word 2013. When I received a new document and opened it exclusively on my laptop the problem seemed to clear up.

However.

I just did the update to Win8.1 and am about halfway into the document I'm editing (a novel, about 66K words) and the lag is starting to take effect again. Has anyone else noticed problems with Office after updating Windows to 8.1?

Thanks! I will be contacting Microsoft Support via Twitter (I find the Microsoft site itself to be virtually un-navigable) and sending them a link to this conversation. Maybe then someone will actually, you know, FIX THE PROBLEM so that we don't have to go rooting around in the background to try and slap together a solution.
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Anonymous

2013-10-13T16:24:27+00:00

I did a clean install to a new Windows 8 PC and got the slow save problem. Endured it for a few weeks and then Goggled this thread and am now reverting to the 1997-2003 format - solves the problem. Clearly an astonishing bug for long documents with footnotes. And no solution from Microsoft. Amazing.
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Anonymous

2013-10-02T20:30:14+00:00

Hmmm,

I'm actually received the manuscript as a .doc file and have been working in Compatibility Mode the entire time. A little nervous about converting it to .docx. Are you saying you editing it as a .doc and then sent it back as a .docx? Or did you work on it, save it, convert it, and then convert it back?

Thanks very much for the response, by the way.
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Anonymous

2013-10-02T20:07:49+00:00

Hi! I too am an editor and I feel your pain.

This happens to me in some documents that are in the .docx format for files with more that 15 pages or so. Like you, I tried all the usual suggestions. However, the only thing that made to problem go away was saving the file as a Word 97 document (.doc) then converting it back to .docx before returning the completed file to the client.

I was nervous about possible loss of formatting and issues relating to the clients tables and layout that might have arisen, however, there have been no problems so far.
Was this answer helpful?

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