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?

Why go through all that trouble when it has been established that just one of your actions - disable background saving - solves the issue? That alone didn't fix the problem. As the original message said, doing all of the above did. As you can see from other replies here, other users are having the same problem.

Rufine, I know you can't use RTF, but have you tried to copy all to clipboard and paste using merge formatting into a new Word document? I had similar issues of long save times (opening the document was a bit slow too) and lag when typing also when opening the document it would take some time to count all the pages and be ready to use. After reading lots of posts on this thread I tried to disable background saves, then I tried WinWord / safe, looked at the add-in COM stuff (chickened out), and even tried disabling all AutoComplete or any spelling or grammar or anything that might try to fix or monitor my document and it still was doggy. The document was an "rtf" type of file format with about 410 pages and 120,000 words (about 1.6 MB). I admit that this particular document had been worked on and saved (or converted) by different applications (Word, Pages, WordPad, Pages New, Google Docs probably had it for a while too, who knows what else over the years - it was probably started in NotePad and worked on with TextEdit too) (the document is at least 10 years old) on multiple systems of differing OS. It is now getting fairly complex with tables, web addresses, bulleting and more. I opened the document in Word 2013 and used the select all command and copied it to the clipboard, then pasted to a newly created Word 2013 document using the merge formatting option and so far everything seems to look great and works great too. I did select some options like spacing between paragraphs in the newly created document before pasting the data to it, so the end result is closer to what I was looking for. My web address hyperlinks came through as active links even though they were not active in the original document - I guess I could have specified this in the new document before pasting but it doesn't really bother me so it stays that way. The new file is in the docx format and the size fell from 1.6 MB to 328 KB - I could not find any missing information in the new file and was surprised the new file was that much smaller. So far so good - will see if over time the performance wanes.

I have a 1100 page document with 500k words... Saving to RTF doesn't work for me... I have graphics and links.

I had this problem and tried all sorts of fixes. Disabling background saves works BUT you lose the autosaving and have to remember to save your work periodically. Eventually I noticed that documents created in 2013 saved without this delay whereas documents created in an earlier version of Word had the delay. Converting a document to the new format doesn't help one jot. The answer is simple: Save the original Word document in RTF file format Open a NEW Word 2013 document and import the RTF file Save the document in Word 2013 format Result - No extended delays when saving AND you can keep your background saves. Your result surprises me a lot. I've tried this. In my experience, saving was OK to start with but got gradually slower with each save. So, I suspect this is a temporary but not permanent fix. Have you used this some time/for a larger number of saves? Since doing this copy and paste into a new document, we've had no problems. Our documents are large - the current one we are working on is 141,000 words and contains large graphics. It now saves quickly. We keep a backup on the cloud but mostly save local copies because we have a relatively slow broadband connection. the MS method of converting a document to the new format produces files which take ages to save.

I had this problem and tried all sorts of fixes. Disabling background saves works BUT you lose the autosaving and have to remember to save your work periodically. Eventually I noticed that documents created in 2013 saved without this delay whereas documents created in an earlier version of Word had the delay. Converting a document to the new format doesn't help one jot. The answer is simple: Save the original Word document in RTF file format Open a NEW Word 2013 document and import the RTF file Save the document in Word 2013 format Result - No extended delays when saving AND you can keep your background saves. Your result surprises me a lot. I've tried this. In my experience, saving was OK to start with but got gradually slower with each save. So, I suspect this is a temporary but not permanent fix. Have you used this some time/for a larger number of saves?

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?

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

Anonymous

2015-01-03T23:29:11+00:00

Why go through all that trouble when it has been established that just one of your actions - disable background saving - solves the issue?

That alone didn't fix the problem. As the original message said, doing all of the above did. As you can see from other replies here, other users are having the same problem.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2014-12-31T03:45:37+00:00

Rufine, I know you can't use RTF, but have you tried to copy all to clipboard and paste using merge formatting into a new Word document?

I had similar issues of long save times (opening the document was a bit slow too) and lag when typing also when opening the document it would take some time to count all the pages and be ready to use.

After reading lots of posts on this thread I tried to disable background saves, then I tried WinWord / safe, looked at the add-in COM stuff (chickened out), and even tried disabling all AutoComplete or any spelling or grammar or anything that might try to fix or monitor my document and it still was doggy.

The document was an "rtf" type of file format with about 410 pages and 120,000 words (about 1.6 MB). I admit that this particular document had been worked on and saved (or converted) by different applications (Word, Pages, WordPad, Pages New, Google Docs probably had it for a while too, who knows what else over the years - it was probably started in NotePad and worked on with TextEdit too) (the document is at least 10 years old) on multiple systems of differing OS.

It is now getting fairly complex with tables, web addresses, bulleting and more.

I opened the document in Word 2013 and used the select all command and copied it to the clipboard, then pasted to a newly created Word 2013 document using the merge formatting option and so far everything seems to look great and works great too. I did select some options like spacing between paragraphs in the newly created document before pasting the data to it, so the end result is closer to what I was looking for.

My web address hyperlinks came through as active links even though they were not active in the original document - I guess I could have specified this in the new document before pasting but it doesn't really bother me so it stays that way. The new file is in the docx format and the size fell from 1.6 MB to 328 KB - I could not find any missing information in the new file and was surprised the new file was that much smaller.

So far so good - will see if over time the performance wanes.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2014-12-21T17:22:13+00:00

I have a 1100 page document with 500k words...

Saving to RTF doesn't work for me...

I have graphics and links.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2014-12-12T13:08:47+00:00
I had this problem and tried all sorts of fixes. Disabling background saves works BUT you lose the autosaving and have to remember to save your work periodically. Eventually I noticed that documents created in 2013 saved without this delay whereas documents created in an earlier version of Word had the delay. Converting a document to the new format doesn't help one jot.

The answer is simple:

Save the original Word document in RTF file format

Open a NEW Word 2013 document and import the RTF file

Save the document in Word 2013 format

Result - No extended delays when saving AND you can keep your background saves.

Your result surprises me a lot. I've tried this. In my experience, saving was OK to start with but got gradually slower with each save. So, I suspect this is a temporary but not permanent fix. Have you used this some time/for a larger number of saves?
Since doing this copy and paste into a new document, we've had no problems. Our documents are large - the current one we are working on is 141,000 words and contains large graphics. It now saves quickly. We keep a backup on the cloud but mostly save local copies because we have a relatively slow broadband connection. the MS method of converting a document to the new format produces files which take ages to save.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2014-12-12T09:18:02+00:00
I had this problem and tried all sorts of fixes. Disabling background saves works BUT you lose the autosaving and have to remember to save your work periodically. Eventually I noticed that documents created in 2013 saved without this delay whereas documents created in an earlier version of Word had the delay. Converting a document to the new format doesn't help one jot.

The answer is simple:

Save the original Word document in RTF file format

Open a NEW Word 2013 document and import the RTF file

Save the document in Word 2013 format

Result - No extended delays when saving AND you can keep your background saves.
Your result surprises me a lot. I've tried this. In my experience, saving was OK to start with but got gradually slower with each save. So, I suspect this is a temporary but not permanent fix. Have you used this some time/for a larger number of saves?
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments