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

Anonymous
2013-01-16T14:12:48+00:00

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

163 answers

Sort by: Oldest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2014-07-04T07:10:38+00:00

    This alleviated the issue completely. Now documents save virtually instantaneously. If you have a specific reason to require background saves, then this will obviously not be your solution, but for those who do not, it is a simple solution.

    For Office 2013:

    1. Select the "File" tab
    2. Select "Options" in the left navigation
    3. Select "Advanced" in the left navigation
    4. Scroll down to the "Save" section (about half way down the page)
    5. Make sure that "Allow background saves" is unchecked
    6. Click the "OK" button.

    I just want to update the community on the working solution to the exact same problem.

    Unchecking "Allow background saves" is the working solution.

    Unchecking "allow background saves", saving is just 2 seconds.

    Checking "allow background saves", saving is > 20 seconds!

    Everyone should try it and update to this thread so it will help others.

    Or best, can anyone mark this as the "Answer/Solution/Fix" to list it at the top of the thread?

    To be exact (repeating @MrChiGuy step)

    For Office 2013:

    1. Select the "File" tab
    2. Select "Options" in the left navigation
    3. Select "Advanced" in the left navigation
    4. Scroll down to the "Save" section (about half way down the page)
    5. Make sure that "Allow background saves" is unchecked
    6. Click the "OK" button.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2014-07-05T15:44:16+00:00

    Thanks for repeating this. I finally tried it despite my protest that disabling automatic saves can be dangerous. It did fix the entire problem. Any other solution I have tried turns out to be temporary. Disabling automatic saves makes it absolutely necessary to save often. Saves are so fast now the progress bar doesn't even come on most of the time. Microsoft, you should be embarrassed.  This is clearly a common problem and disabling automatic saves should not be a necessary work-around.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2014-08-14T10:21:48+00:00

    I just wanted to add that I also have same problem, Word 2013 takes ages to save longer files over 100 pages.

    Is Word created for use of 20 pages max ? if so Microsoft should let us now in advanced before we purchase such faulty, unfinished but EXPENSIVE product.

    It was better to use OpenOffice which is free and no hassle.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2014-08-14T11:17:52+00:00

    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...

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2014-09-23T13:53:49+00:00

    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.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments