This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
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.
Brunno,
Sorry to report that this does NOT fix the problem for me.
However, I DID manage to reproduce the problem in a relatively small (about 12 pages, less than 1MB) file and Microsoft accepted my offer (made via the "frowny face" mechanism) to send it to them. Let's hope they can figure out the problems from this example and finally fix it permanently.
Running newly installed Word 15.16 on El Capitan 10.11.1 with a 300 kb document and found horrible lag. Implemented Paulo's fix above and it seems much better, but this isn't a sustainable fix. Very disappointing.
It's a hardware acceleration feature that was added to Word 2016!
problem solved!
I'm glad you found a solution that works for you.
However, while it MIGHT work on PC's, this does NOT correct the problem on MAC's. I have the latest updates of Office 365 installed on both a PC and a Mac. The PC is VERY OLD (2006 HP desktop with 1TB WD hard drive and 4GB of slow DRAM) running Windows 7 Professional. The MAC is VERY NEW (2015 MacBook Pro with 1TB SSD and 16GB of DDR3-1600 DRAM) running OS X 10.11.2. While the lag on the PC is an IRRITATION... on the MAC, it's a deal-breaker!
As I mentioned to Brunno on Dec. 3, I was contacted by Microsoft in November and emailed them a relatively small (900kB) document that exhibits the problem quite severely on my system. I HOPE that they are able to reproduce the issue and figure out how to correct it.