I have a set of documents that have a somewhat unusual structure, sample below. The exact nature of the contents is not important, but the gist is that the resulting document has an enormous number of paragraphs, because each line is terminated by an Enter.

The docs vary in size, but even the largest is not out of bounds - around 4 MB. However, Word has a tough time when the docs get that large - unbelievably slow, and prone to hanging completely. Other, 'normal' docs of similar size Word handles with ease, so it's not simply the volume that causes problems. I suspect it's the number of paragraphs, since each paragraph has its own set of properties. Word is not optimized for such a structure - a few hundred paragraphs are child's play. However, a few hundred THOUSAND paragraphs seemingly are not (this particular document has almost 3/4 million such 'paragraphs').

Does anyone have experience with such constructs? Is there a way to convince Word to deal with it, or should I simply go to a different editor? I've tried a few other, text-only editors, like Notepad++ and PsPad. Both open even such monsters immediately, search through the entire text instantly and save changes with no noticeable pause. However, Word has well-known advantages - autosave, built-in VBA, etc., so I am somewhat reluctant to just give it up. But I need to work with these things, and if Word is simply not the proper tool, I'll need to switch.

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