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It is impossible to edit some documents because of VERY slow, jerky, jumpy, laggy, erratic, stuttering cursor movement (horizontal worse than vertical). I have been forced to go back to using Word 2011. I am a professional novelist and cannot practice my trade with Word 2016!! This is very disappointing.
As a novelist I work with large word count simply formatted documents with a file size of less than 1M. I have not experimented to find a cut off point with regard to word count but documents in the 100K word size or more (less than 1M file size) exhibit this slow, jerky, laggy cursor movement problem. Small documents in the 5K word range do not have this problem on any of my notebooks.
It can take 10 seconds or more to move the cursor from the right to left side of the page (or vice-versa). This slow erratic cursor movement is especially troubling when trying to select a few words (highlighting them) for editing. It is very frustrating.
I have experimented and found that brand new documents in 2016 file format exhibit this problem. I have created documents with zero text formatting and they have this problem. I removed all formatting in these test documents by copying and pasting ASCII text into the newly created 2016 format doc from original Word 2011 documents.
I have replicated this same problem on three different macbook computers all with SSD and max ram. None of these computers are running with more than 5% CPU utilization (running nothing else except Word 2016). All of these notebook computers edit the same files just fine using Word 2011.
Track changes is not turned on, nor is any other unusual "feature" or function. This problem occurs in all display modes: draft, layout, etc.
**All these notebooks are running the latest version of Yosemite and all with 100% up to date software.
**This is a fatal mission-critical problem for me which has forced me to revert back to using Word 2011. Again, this is very disappointing.**I have been a Word user for something over 25 years (started on MS/PC DOS).
Similar / same problems here:
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
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.
I confirm quitting Dropbox solves that ridiculous M$oft lag for me.
But Bill Gates just put 1 billion in SoftBank so all bugs will be gone.
I have had this exact issue. Working on a 400 page book that is is 2.6 MB file size has become IMPOSSIBLE. I have a pretty fast computer (new i3, SSD, 16 MB RAM). Scrolling, using the arrow keys, typing...massively excessive lag and responsiveness.
However, I have SOLVED it for me. I hope this helps someone else.
Word 2016. I went into File > Options > General. From there, unchecked "Enable Live Preview."
BAM! Problem solved. Word is responsive. No lag. No delays.
Philip
This actually worked well for me. I tried other suggestions including looking at startup items which may be affecting performance, shutting down Dropbox, etc, but this suggestion actually made the program usable. Shame we have to go this route but it was unusable. Before, it took one second for the cursor to move when I hit backspace.
Thanks
Garry
That was very helpful. I pinned down the problem to the Dropbox badge. I disabled it from the Dropbox preferences and it works perfectly now.
I am the guy that originally started this thread on July 12, 2015... The problems I was experiencing were on a range of Macbook pro and Air notebooks. A couple of months after starting this thread the problems were resolved by a Microsoft upgrade. The cursor movement was never smooth but it was fast.
Sadly, now a year and a half later the problem has returned with the latest upgrade. The cursor movement is again slow and stuttering. This stuttering occurs on 1 page documents as well as 500 page manuscripts. All these documents are basic text, no graphics, and simple formatting. Often if I close the document and reopen it things will work fine for a while then the problem returns. This occurs on a wide range of 5 different mac notebooks (from a 2015 Macbook 12" retina to a 2013 Macbook Retina Pro). This proves the problem is in Word and not something wrong on a specific computer.
I find it particularly disappointing that this problem has resurfaced, and equally disappointing that it obviously has never been fully fixed for all people.