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
    2015-08-17T16:18:34+00:00

    I concur.

    A bag of hurt, a sack of bugs, totally unusable, this on our 2014 or 2015 Macs.

    Ridiculous.

    Microsoft will be bought back in the next 5 years…

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-08-17T16:17:03+00:00

    "Hi Caroline:

    Not such a crazy idea, methinks.  None of the beta testers ever experienced this issue: it first showed up ONLY in the released version.  For most folks, it seems to have been cured with the 15.12.3 update, which adjusted the tuning of various modules."

    You must be living in Disney World !

    I've been  beta tester of Word 2016 pre-release since June 2015. 

    Lagging problem has been a disaster since then, and continued on Office release.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-08-14T21:30:30+00:00

    Updated to 15.13.1 and JUST got a new MacBook Pro Retina with an 8-core 2.5GHz core i7, 16GB of 1600MHz DRAM and 1TB of PCIe SSD hard drive.

    I regularly create 300- to 400-page documents.  With ONE of these open and nothing else (except Apple Mail), scrolling gets INTOLERABLY slow after about 3 to 5 minutes of work.  When this happens, CPU utilization approaches 100%.  During fast page scrolling, pages lag anywhere from 10 to 30 behind.  I touch type at about 80 WPM, and, during typing, the letters will still echo back at the rate of 1 character every 2 or 3 seconds, so I have to sometimes wait 30 to 50 seconds to see a paragraph.

    SOMETHING IS HORRIBLY WRONG WITH WORD 2016.  Having to return to 2011, cause I just can NOT work with something this horrid.

    I've reported this to Microsoft (several times since 2016 released), and have given them my email address, but no one has contacted me.

    I'll keep checking back from time to time in the hope that a future update finally fixes this issue... Guess I'm just an optimist!

    AND, AND, as I was typing this message, Word 2016 was sitting idle on an open file, when it simply crashed... doing NOTHING!

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-08-14T16:28:41+00:00

    Hi Derik,

    Here is an update after using Word for about 2 weeks... When typing quickly the words come out unevenly in spurts - so typing is laggy and surging. This seems to have gotten worse with the last update (15.13.1). The cursor movement is also still a little laggy and surging but livable. Cursor movement may be a little worse with this new update or not (hard to tell). The words coming out with a lag then a surge does make it difficult to type fast. So I find myself again torn whether to keep using 2016 or go back to Word 2011.

    Kevin

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