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

Hi all,

I've had the same problems with my dissertation. However, playing around seems to have solved the problem for me:

First, I saved my large file (docx / Word 2007) to the new format (docx / Word 2013).

Second, I opened the style sheets dialog (Formatvorlagen) and copied the style sheets from the old document (2007) to the new document (2013), overwriting the  style sheets in the 2013 docx.

Word saves a lot quicker, now.

Hope this works out for you as well.

MaTsee

Hi,

that's interesting. Does this apply to all documents, or just this document?

I've also found that if you're saving the file while closing Word, the saving is as fast as it can be. But only when you're closing the application.

I haven't tried this with other documents, yet. 

However, I can reproduce the quick-saving effect that you describe when I close & save a document. This seems like a useful workaround to me (unless you are working with different windows (Fenster) on that document).

Word 2013 is funny. 

I've been working for several days on the same document. Sometimes it saves quickly, and other times it takes half a minute. Both effects occur when saving manually and during the automatic saving process. I can't figure out why. However, when I close the document, saving is always quick.

I have had similar experience with Word 2013 (15.0.4454.1504) 64-bit, part of Office Professional Plus 2013, and I think I figured out a workaround, or at least the cause of the problem.

I keep an engineering journal document that grows over time each year, typically peaking at around 200 pages in December. The document contains a couple of simple macros and is password protected. I am also a heavy keyboard user and fast typist.

In all versions of Word prior to 2013, scrolling through documents has been fast and responsive, whether I'm using just the arrow keys, CTRL+arrow key, PageUp/PageDn, CTRL+Home, etc. And saving the file with CTRL+S has always taken less than a couple of seconds.

When I upgraded to Word 2013, I found that it has been nearly unusable. I save frequently as I'm typing, and so after I'd type in a paragraph I hit CTRL+S, and at that point the application does everything but freeze up. The "Word is Saving..." progress bar in the status bar appears, and as of this morning, saving my (now 50 page long) document takes at least ten to fifteen seconds. Worse, while it's saving, if I type a letter or a word, nothing will appear in the document for several seconds, and then a few letters will suddenly show up.

This has been tolerable, albeit frustrating, but the real problem is the performance when I am not saving the file. Scrolling through text, typing, selecting text; nearly all editing operations are painfully slow.

I found this thread while searching for a solution, and it seems that while many people are encountering this issue, I am not seeing any practical solutions beyond "your system is inadequate" or "your installation or document is corrupt".

I am running on a clean installation of Windows 8 on an HP Z800 Workstation--24 core, 2 socket Xeon with 24G of RAM and a fast GPU, and a fast SSD hard drive. The hardware is clearly not an issue.

Recently I also tried disabling hardware graphics acceleration, which had no effect.

Finally this morning I figured out "a" (not sure if it is "the") problem--my document had been saved in the newer docm format. I did a Save As, and picked the tried-and-true "Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc)" format, and suddenly everything is lightning fast.

I recognize that the old binary format is less secure and perhaps has limitations but in fact it works, Word is now fast and responsive, and I am able to get my work done.

Your mileage may vary, but it worked for me. Something seems to be broken in the new docm handling logic--perhaps it only affects documents that contain macros or are password-protected. But until Microsoft releases a fix it may be worth trying the older .doc format and see if that doesn't improve things.