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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.
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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.
Thanks for your reply, John. Lots of good information in that post!
Having ported software to multiple architectures in my time (e.g., IBM software to both VAX and CRAY), I can sympathize with the problems the Office team must be facing. And, by taking actions like abandoning Cocoa after many years, Apple is definitely NOT helping software developers. I also know that there is often NO WAY to optimize a particular set of code for two different architectures simultaneously... particularly something as complex as WYSIWYG word processing.
Based on my testing, I completely agree with your assessment that "Word won't start to slow down until a document contains about 2,000 pages, and it will remain usable up to around 5,000 pages, provided the internal structure of the document is simple and clean." I'm a firm believer that documents should not be more complex than the minimum required for the particular task.
Unfortunately, achieving simplicity when working with demanding customers and horrendously tight time constraints is sometimes not possible. For us, Word 2016 just isn't ready yet. So, the PRUDENT strategy is to TRY Word 2016, but KEEP 2011 so you can revert if you HAVE to.
Hi Duane:
Yes, I strongly agree. Word 2016 is not ready for the Production System yet.
I keep trying, and each time, Word 2016 gets a little closer.
But I usually end up having to finish the job in Word 2013 for the PC :-)
Cheers
Hi John,
in the Office for windows if you select the "FILE" you will get the option to "Inspect" the Document. Please see attached photo: 
If you select "Inspect Document", then you get a window (second photo attached) with many choices, one of which is the "Custom XML". I Pressed "REMOVE" and then the file was working smoothly in the Office 2016 for MAC version. The document wasn't blank, and all the styles I have created remained, nothing has really changed and so far I haven't faced any problem at all.
I hope I cleared this out for you and sorry for any confusion. You can back up your file and try it out, who knows, maybe it will work for you as well.
Good luck!
Best,
R.
Same description as noted above. Complicated and long word doc or short and simple. Long lags between letters and cursor movement, cursor disappears, all activity frozen - then one letter, movement at a time separated by 3-5 secs. After closing and reopening, or rebooting, it starts the same pattern. I am using multiple windows-based PCs, including 64 bit laptops with 12-16 gigs, the latest I7 processor, SSDs and hard disks. One issue may be relevant - while I am not using any apple devices, the docs are being edited (also) on apple machines - all using Word. Maybe there is a crossover problem. Would appreciate this issue being resolved quickly.