MS Word lagging on 2020 Apple M1 MacBook Pro

My document is 5 MB and I am having a severe lag, especially when using Track changes. I have 500 GB storage and 16 GB RAM, and it used 100% of my CPUs just to scroll within the document. I am constantly getting the spinning wheel as well, too. My IT dept tried to revert it back to an earlier version but the Microsoft Updater would not let it revert. So now I am stuck with this brick :(

It's happening to me, in larger Word documents. There are waves when every edit I make, every attempt to move to another section of the document I'm working in, attempts to scroll from one place to another, etc., involve a spinning wheel and several seconds of latency. I'm using an M1 iMac with 2G storage and 16G RAM.

I have a 2024 macbook air with the M3 chip and noticed this lagging issue a week or so ago as well. I also use Microsoft 365. If anyone has a solution please let me know. Is this because of an apple update or a microsoft update?

The very first post in this discussion has a link to older versions and direction regarding which one you should use and how to download that version. I followed those instructions and I have been fine ever since. Two caveats. One, delete your current Word. Then download the version listed. Second, turn off you autoupdate. That is what I did and have been good ever since. I am using version: Version 16.84 of Word.

Here is the link to older versions: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-office-for-mac

I am editing a large document [458K] using Word 2021 on a 2021 Macbook Pro with an M1 chip and running Sonoma 14.6.1. The deeper I got into the document, the slower things became, until I could not select a single word without getting the spinning beachball, I could not scroll, I could not select lines or blocks of text, could not move text, and in short the whole thing failed utterly.

I understand from a colleague at Intel that the large file fails because I am exceeding the capacity of the emulator in the M1 chip to translate the Intel-based commands. This should NOT be a problem three years after the release of that chip and this version of Office! I am FURIOUS.

I am using a single-payment version of Office 2021 rather than a subscription. I went to the MS site to learn more about the subscription and discovered under the Requirements tab that I need the Intel processor. This information appears nowhere on the amazon description of the product -- if it had, I would never have purchased it because Office 2019 was working fine on my machine. I was updating because I thought it would be a good idea, but it has been a total trainwreck.

I asked the support people if I could uninstall Office 2021 and reinstall the 2019 version and they agreed this would work.

I cannot do this because when I try to download the Office 2019 from my account window the Microsoft site automatically sends me the Office 2021 version instead -- I tried this four times, all the same. It refuses to let me get my Office 2019 back and I am frantic. I'm a teacher, I must be able to work on large Word files. There is no access to Microsoft support on the download page.

How can I get my Office 2019 back if the Microsoft site refuses to download it?????