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 only way to locate the damaged part of the document is to proceed as follows: Make a copy of the document. Divide it into two halves and see which half has the problem. Split the problem half a second time, etc., until you have isolated the damaged part.

First of all thank you for your help. Unfortunately this wasn't the problem. I tried as you suggested and copied each section without the final paragraph mark into a ne document. However the problem remained: Pasting and Saving as slow as ever... Anymore ideas on this?

What you describe suggests section-level corruption as a possible cause. You don't have to delete footnotes, but you should try copying the document, section by section, making sure to omit each section break and also the final paragraph mark of the document (the latter mark contains section formatting for the last section of a document, or for the only section in a document without section breaks). For more on this, see http://word.mvps.org/faqs/apperrors/corruptdoc.htm .

I found out that this does not happen with every "long" Word document. If I create a new document with a long text, everything works fine. I also tried: Copying the complete text out of this document and pasting it including it's style sheets into a new .docx --> same problem Deleting all footnotes --> same problem Deleting all style sheets and using "Standard-Style Sheet" for the complete text --> same problem Deleting all style sheets --> same problem Copying the complete text and pasting it as plane text (without style sheets and footnotes) into a new document --> works fine That means that I can only solve the problem by copying the whole text into a new document and reformatting every single word, retyping every single footnote. That is unacceptable. Keep in mind that the same document works fine in Word 2010. So there must be a problem with Word 2013. By the way: I also tried this with othe long documents that fulfill the following criteria: > 100 pages > 300 footnotes > extensive style sheets several section breaks Again: Even if I delete all style sheets, sections breaks, footnotes, headers and format the whole text as plane Standard Text, saving and pasting is still as slow as before. Only if I copy and paste the whole text as plane text into a new document, the problem disappears. Any ideas?

Hi, I had time to test all of the above recommendations. Unfortunately none of them solved the problem. I am pretty sure that the problem isn't based on my system configuration. It is a clean install of Windows 8. On top of that it got worse: I am now facing at least 20 seconds saving time and 3 seconds "text pasting" time... Word is practically useless like this. Could you please test this behaviour with a large file on your system? Thank you very much!

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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163 answers

Stefan Blom 351.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2013-01-23T13:07:59+00:00

The only way to locate the damaged part of the document is to proceed as follows: Make a copy of the document. Divide it into two halves and see which half has the problem. Split the problem half a second time, etc., until you have isolated the damaged part.
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Anonymous

2013-01-23T10:53:25+00:00

First of all thank you for your help.

Unfortunately this wasn't the problem. I tried as you suggested and copied each section without the final paragraph mark into a ne document. However the problem remained: Pasting and Saving as slow as ever...

Anymore ideas on this?
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Stefan Blom 351.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2013-01-20T18:10:08+00:00

What you describe suggests section-level corruption as a possible cause. You don't have to delete footnotes, but you should try copying the document, section by section, making sure to omit each section break and also the final paragraph mark of the document (the latter mark contains section formatting for the last section of a document, or for the only section in a document without section breaks). For more on this, see http://word.mvps.org/faqs/apperrors/corruptdoc.htm.
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Anonymous

2013-01-20T11:18:47+00:00
I found out that this does not happen with every "long" Word document. If I create a new document with a long text, everything works fine.

I also tried:
- Copying the complete text out of this document and pasting it including it's style sheets into a new .docx --> same problem
- Deleting all footnotes --> same problem
- Deleting all style sheets and using "Standard-Style Sheet" for the complete text --> same problem
- Deleting all style sheets --> same problem
- Copying the complete text and pasting it as plane text (without style sheets and footnotes) into a new document --> works fine
That means that I can only solve the problem by copying the whole text into a new document and reformatting every single word, retyping every single footnote. That is unacceptable. Keep in mind that the same document works fine in Word 2010. So there must be a problem with Word 2013. By the way: I also tried this with othe long documents that fulfill the following criteria:

> 100 pages

> 300 footnotes

> extensive style sheets

several section breaks

Again: Even if I delete all style sheets, sections breaks, footnotes, headers and format the whole text as plane Standard Text, saving and pasting is still as slow as before. Only if I copy and paste the whole text as plane text into a new document, the problem disappears.

Any ideas?
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Anonymous

2013-01-20T10:40:32+00:00

Hi,

I had time to test all of the above recommendations. Unfortunately none of them solved the problem. I am pretty sure that the problem isn't based on my system configuration. It is a clean install of Windows 8.

On top of that it got worse: I am now facing at least 20 seconds saving time and 3 seconds "text pasting" time... Word is practically useless like this.

Could you please test this behaviour with a large file on your system?

Thank you very much!
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