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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.
Sorry about that.
To follow up on my one point, I'm at work now and the computer has also slowed down significantly again. Turning of Dropbox seems to have helped, though I need to use the service for work.
My work computer stats are:
iMac 21.5-inch, late 2013
2.7 GHz Intel Core i5
8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Running El Capitan
Word 15.24
I assume I have the same Word build at home. (I updated them both at the same time and also checked for updates. There are currently none available.)
Regards,
Lori
To get the version and build number go to the Word menu and choose About Word. Be sure to include this information in your reply. Thank you.
Hi Jim,
I'm glad to hear they're actively looking into it. I've installed it both here at home and at work, both Macs, and both running slow. Turning off the AutoCorrect helped in both cases. However, today, my home version slowed down again. I saw the suggestion to exit out of Dropbox, and that sped things up again.
Of course, as others have said, Dropbox integration is still necessary, since other customers use it and since we use it at work.
I unfortunately don't have time to help with its development, but I saw earlier that you'd requested more people post if they have something useful to post, so here it is.
Stats:
iMac mid-2011
2.5 GHz Intel Core i5
12 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Running El Capitan
I also seem to have a remnant of Word 2008 on my system. I had it installed at one point, of course, until I upgraded to Office 365. I uninstalled Word 2008 and haven't seen it since. However, after I installed Office 2016 for Mac, AutoUpdater now repeatedly asks to download a 2008 update. You (or someone else) had mentioned earlier that this slow-down problem isn't on all machines. Not sure if something from Word/Office 2008 is contributing? (The machine at work never had Office 2008, but I don't know if it's slowed down again since I was last in on Thursday. As of Thursday, it was working fine so long as AutoCorrect was turned off. I also don't have its stats handy, but it's not quite three years old, runs on El Capitan, and has 8 GB RAM.)
DropBox integration is something Microsoft is actively working on. If you want to help with its development, join the Insider Fast program (beta program - unsupported builds with large and frequent updates) and post results to the special insider forum.
To join, go to the Help menu in Word and choose Check for Updates to open AutoUpdate app. Click the box to join the Insider program and then click the pop-up to choose the Fast version.
Even if you don't want to join the program, be sure to post the version and build number in replies to this thread because the behavior is sure to change over time. To get the version and build number use the Word menu and choose About Word. Saying "latest" version is not helpful, as the latest version changes every few weeks.