Image rendering and the associated pagination calculations inevitably slows down any application. The more images, the greater the impact.

For editing performance, you could switch to draft view or go to File|Options|Advanced>Show document content and check the 'Show picture placeholders' option.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Thanks for the help. Can't use the first one as it changes the page layout. The second one helped some, but only a few of the images were replaced by outline boxes