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

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.

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.

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.

Hello,

 I have had issues with slow saves as well. Yesterday I noticed the document was open in compatibility mode. I also edit the document on Word 2010 on another computer and after opening and saving on Word 2010, Word 2013 opens the document in compatibility mode. Maybe it was after doing this the slow save problem started, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I re -saved ("save as") last night in Word 2013 and presto this morning the problem was gone. One other factor; I have dual operating systems and opened the document this morning on my leaner back up system. That is when I noticed the slow save problem was gone. When I rebooted from my regular operating system, the slow save problem continued to be gone. I'm happy, but I don't know if this experience will help the rest of you guys.

Turning off background save, by the way, could get you in trouble if you forget to save and experience a problem. You may regret doing that at some point and shouldn't have to.

Good luck, Gordon

Hi,

Some 9 months ago I posted the solution that worked for me. I forgot all about the issue in the meantime.  Reposting might help? The problem, to my best knowledge, is in the background saving of documents. Since saving on a modern day computer does not require all that much time, switch to foreground saving by:

disable: options -> advanced -> save -> allow background saves.

best regards,

Jan