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

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-04-23T04:51:18+00:00

    I found that it takes nearly 30 seconds to save a 45 page .docx file. After converting the file to the -doc (word 2003-7) format, the save is instant, though the file size increases from 180 kb to nearly 500kb.

    The file size is not a problem. After changing the -.doc file back to .docx, the delay returns.

    As a work-around, provided formats are not changed, I can convert client documents to the earlier format, than convert back to the coustomers orignial fily type before returning the document.

    The message here is "really? so what did I pay for when I purchased Office 2013 professional?"

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-04-23T11:36:26+00:00

    Changing the file type is not always an option. I edit client documents and cannot change the format.

    Well, you could change to another format, work on the document, and then switch back to the customer's preffered format when you're done.

    P.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-04-23T11:41:05+00:00

    It's interesting that we get no response from Microsoft what so ever. Don't they read their own community? We isolate and analyze their bug for them - and the least we would expect is a recogition of the bug and a "Thank you!".

    This seems a more and more frustrationg waste of time. Wake up, Microsoft, this is costing you a lot of badwill!

    P.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-04-24T02:50:05+00:00

    Nice idea, unfortunately it did not make any difference to the long save times for long *,docx documents on my computer.

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  5. Anonymous
    2013-04-24T03:02:03+00:00

    Thanks, eventually I realised that, although there is the risk of loosing formatting layouts from a clients document. I am currently using this workaround for a text-only file and it is going well.

    The irony is that I had been using a borrowed version of Word 2010 with no problems. However, when I could afford it, I did the right thing and purchased Office 2013. Unfortunately I was happier with 2010!

    Apart from the issue with lengthy saves, there are keystroke lag problems. Also, I do not like the save dialog at all; I already have a cloud service and do not like being badgered to use skydrive everytime I want to save a document.

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