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?

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 .

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?

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.

Thanks, Stefan, but I already tried that - the thing is: If I split the document in halfs (p 1-50 and p 51-102) both halfs show the same problem although they both are slightly faster. If I split both halfs into 4 parts the speed improves again for all 4 document s. If I split those again, all remaining 8 documents (they have only about 10 to 15 pages and <70 KB each by now) save with a normal speed. That clearly suggests that there is no "damaged part" at all in this document but Word 2013 can't handle it the way it should as soon as it get's large... Also the speed get's worse with the increasing length of the file not with the increaseing size (it doesn't get worse if I add a picture however it does if I add more pages). If I didn't know better I'd say the problem lies within the style sheets. But as already said: Even if I delete all custom style sheets, there is no improvement... Is there anything else that Word might have trouble with?

Hmm, you said earlier that you had tested with other long documents, without running into the issue. The question seems to remain: What is specific to the problem document?

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

2013-01-20T18:10:08+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

2013-01-23T10:53:25+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

2013-01-23T13:07:59+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

2013-01-23T13:49:12+00:00

Thanks, Stefan, but I already tried that - the thing is:

If I split the document in halfs (p 1-50 and p 51-102) both halfs show the same problem although they both are slightly faster. If I split both halfs into 4 parts the speed improves again for all 4 documents. If I split those again, all remaining 8 documents (they have only about 10 to 15 pages and <70 KB each by now) save with a normal speed.

That clearly suggests that there is no "damaged part" at all in this document but Word 2013 can't handle it the way it should as soon as it get's large... Also the speed get's worse with the increasing length of the file not with the increaseing size (it doesn't get worse if I add a picture however it does if I add more pages).

If I didn't know better I'd say the problem lies within the style sheets. But as already said: Even if I delete all custom style sheets, there is no improvement...

Is there anything else that Word might have trouble with?
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Stefan Blom 351.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2013-01-23T15:29:00+00:00

Hmm, you said earlier that you had tested with other long documents, without running into the issue. The question seems to remain: What is specific to the problem document?
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