Updating citation fields takes too long

[speedo]

I have a simple question: My document contains a large number of citation fields (Word 2010) and I have to edit every single one of them. Here is what I do: I edit a field and update it (via F9), which takes about 2-3 sec.. If I change a batch of fields (say 30-40) and update them together it takes about 3-5 min. Is there any way to speed up that procedure?
Thank you for your help
Guido

[macropod]

Unless you're inserting them manually instead of using Word's referencing tools, updating an individual citation should be almost instantaneous, regardless of how many your document has - and pressing F9 should not be required. I'm not sure what you call a large number but testing on a document with 108 citations (all inserted via Word's referencing tools) and pressing F9 takes about 20 seconds to refresh all the fields.

[speedo]

Thanks for your reply. One problem might be that I manually change the source a citation refers to (i.e. I change the tag from, say, "ABC" to "ABCD" so that a different source is displayed). This probably takes up some time because the new source has to be found and inserted.

But also, if I only change the page number of a citation that also takes those 2-3 sec.

I use about 1500 citations in that doc. After I read your post I tested on an empty document..and field updating also took quite long there. My suspicion: it´s not the number of citations used but the number of sources in the current list (ca. 900 in my case).. But I have no idea.

Any further thoughts on this very welcome..but my feeling is that I just have to bite the bullet, right?
Guido

[macropod]

The number of reference documents may a significant issue - the document I tested on has 142 - but only if you're trying to update that and the citations at the same time.

FWIW, you'd probably get better update performance if your Bibliography used a Bibliography field instead of using Word's Bibliography building block. Tables of Contents built using Word's TOC building block are well known for their performance hit and I suspect the Bibliography building block is no better. You could also replace the Citation building blocks with Citation fields, but you'd then need to learn the field coding to edit them.

[speedo]

thanks for your ideas, I will try them out! What I already tried is to edit the field codes directly (easy for what I want because I only changed the tags), didn´t help much performance-wise though.

My general impression is that the Word reference manager is a good enough tool for standard purposes, but it isn´t really the best tool available for large-scale reference management.
Guido

[macropod]

Well, with 1500 citations and 900 reference works, I doubt any of the alternatives (e.g. Endnote X7) would do much better.

[speedo]

I´m sure you´re right. One shouldn´t pretend to have read that much anyway

Thanks again for taking the time to look into this matter
Guido