Word extremely slow in one particular document

Word doesn't like really long tables, particularly if the one row spans many pages.

Do you have the same problem if you insert a new table into the document and try entering text into that table?

If that does not overcome the problem, make a couple of copies of the document and from one, delete the last half of the table and from the other, delete the first half. Then see if the problem is with one or the other.  If the problem doesn't occur with either of them, try splitting the table in the original document at the same point at which you divided it in the copies.

If the problem occurs in one of the copies, but not the other, repeat the process of dividing the table in the document in which you have a problem until you find the part that is causing the problem.

Hello Paolo!

I tried the OffCAT as you suggested, but to no avail. I haven't noticed any difference in the performance of the troublesome document.

Anyways, since this is an isolated problem of one single document, and not a problem of Word itself, I didn't see how OffCAT could be of use, since it scans the program (Word) and not the troublesome file. OffCAT did say there was a problem with an add-in, but even after disabling it the problem still persists in the file.

Hello Doug!

Thanks to all you guys for trying to help me.

I tried Paolo's OffCAT suggestion above, but didn't quite solve the problem. Next step, I tried your suggestion, which, although didn't solve the problem, seems to have thrown some light on the matter. I must point put that the rows in my table do not contain large texts; rather, they only contain a term and its definition with several formatting indications. So I split the document, and the more I split it into halves, the better it performed in each half! So finally I followed your last suggestion by splitting the long table on the original large document every five pages, and now the document seems to work more smoothly. The problem that arises with this is that I cannot rearrange the table according to columns or rows (which I need to do in several instances, and arrange it back to it's original order).

So for now, the conclusion is that the problem comes from Word's weakening performance the longer/larger you make one single table on a document. In my document this single table extended for 72 pages (not 49 as I stated earlier); but I need this table to be a single one and not split into several.

If someone knows of anything else that may be done to improve the performance in this document, I'll appreciate it very much.

Hi,

Are you still experiencing this issue?

Hi, Paolo!

Since I split the 79 pages long table into several five pages long tables, the document has been performing much better. I saved a copy of the original long table, and whenever I open it, it is slow. So the problem seems to be Word's inability to effectively handle a document that consists only of a really large table.

But, as I said, this causes me the problem that I cannot rearrange over and over the whole table, because it's split into several ones.

I still hope that someone may have a workaround to this problem.

Should you have any other suggestion, I may try it.

Thanks!

Hi, Paolo!

Since I split the 79 pages long table into several five pages long tables, the document has been performing much better. I saved a copy of the original long table, and whenever I open it, it is slow. So the problem seems to be Word's inability to effectively handle a document that consists only of a really large table.

But, as I said, this causes me the problem that I cannot rearrange over and over the whole table, because it's split into several ones.

I still hope that someone may have a workaround to this problem.

Should you have any other suggestion, I may try it.

Thanks!