I can appreciate your frustration but luckily I don't have this problem on my machine. It also sounds like MS has made some changes and some patches that have solved the problem for other users such as John Duxbury. In fact if you note how old this thread
is there hasn't been much noise about this issue for quite a while now. But that doesn't solve your problem...
It sounds like you compressed your images ok, but reference this article which also applies to Publisher 2013 to confirm:
Reference: Picture tool Tab - Compress Pictures (2010): https://support.office.com/en-US/Article/Picture-Tools-Tab-1d2e8f37-922c-4032-b1c0-56c13ca50533?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US#\_\_toc256694329
Assuming your have tried most everything else (Please do go back and study and try everything mentioned in this thread if you haven't already.) then try changing the picture display setting to
Hide pictures (View > Graphics Manager > change picture display...) at least temporarily while you work on the publication. Hopefully this will help alleviate the lag problem you are experiencing if it is associated with your pictures. Though
you do not need to you can change that setting back before you print for a final preview of the page layout.
My last suggestion which is probably a stretch but might actually be less frustrating and save some time is to assume there is something wrong with this particular file and basically start over. Create a new blank publication on your local drive and not
on an external drive. Copy and paste the text boxes from the first publication to the new one. You might even hold down your Ctrl key while you select each text box on the page and then group them (Home > Arrange > Group) before you copy them so the layout
stays the same on the new page. Use Paste Special options to keep your formatting. Then test...can you move around the page(s) without the same lag as you had before?
Then in case the problem you are having is associated with your pictures instead of actually inserting them in this new publication just insert
picture placeholders (insert > Picture placeholder) while you are working on the publication. This will let you layout out the page without potentially having large pictures create a problem for you. Be sure to go to View and check Boundaries
so you can see the empty picture placeholder boxes. Once you have your page layout finished then go back and insert the pictures (again make sure the pictures are also on your local hard drive and not an external or virtual drive), compress them all, and hopefully
you will still have a publication that does not have the lag problem.
DavidF