Word 2016 Cursor movement slow, jumpy, laggy, erratic, stuttering in some documents

Anonymous
2015-07-13T06:29:26+00:00

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.

  • Brand new 2015 macbook 12" retina
  • 2013 Macbook Pro 13" retina
  • 2013 Macbook Air

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:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2016-macword/office-2016-mac-very-laggy/e2656073-6f1b-4535-b78e-ee79e0a4fb4c

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2016-macword/word-2016-laggy-ui-and-scrolling-issues/9de4aeb7-9058-4fb0-a331-72076fed72b2

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2016-macword/performance-of-scrolling-in-word-2016-for-mac-is/f04bbc86-5753-4ef5-a2c3-5cfdcb8cb837

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Anonymous
2016-12-14T20:46:25+00:00

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.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-08-01T15:18:47+00:00

    I am still having the same problem: very high CPU usage (around 100%) and very large lags when typing.  It is excruciating.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-01T15:29:11+00:00

    I am still having the same problem: very high CPU usage (around 100%) and very large lags when typing.  It is excruciating.

    Hi Matt, Have you tried to start computer with shift-key down?

    This will make a start/boot with all extensions off, there might be a conflict somewhere..

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-08-01T21:57:07+00:00

    I am still having the same problem: very high CPU usage (around 100%) and very large lags when typing.  It is excruciating.

    Hi Matt, Have you tried to start computer with shift-key down?

    This will make a start/boot with all extensions off, there might be a conflict somewhere..

    Hi Michael,

    A good idea!  It was noticeably faster with the safe-mode startup.  There were only three items in my startup list: iTunesHelper, Dropbox and BitTorrent.  I removed all three, and then rebooted the computer.  BitTorrent started up again anyway (presumably because it was running before I logged out), but Word then ran noticeably faster, and was much more responsive.  Starting up Dropbox, on the other hand, seemed to slow Word down dramatically, so it seems this this is the culprit.  So I'm going to quit and disable the Dropbox daemon.  (And for anyone else happening to read this thread: if you quit Dropbox, it seems that you then have to restart Word to get Word to work at a decent speed again.)

    Thanks for the help,

    Julian

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-08-03T16:55:51+00:00

    Hi Julian, you just mentioned that Dropbox slowed the word down.

    I just tested it, thing is that if the document i inside Dropbox an Dropbox-icon is added in the right side - see screen dump.

    If word document is outside Dropbox, there is no Dropbox icon so this means that Dropbox integrate itself with word.

    Maybe try to let Dropbox run, but drag the document outside Dropbox - this could mean a a change.

    PS I use dropbox, since i aut get backup, but onedrive offers almost the same features.

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