I am getting really frustrated that almost everything I do now in Word seems to choke the program. I mean a 2000 kg tortoise could move faster.



My doc is 316 pg long, I have 10 instances of Word open, but the Task manager seems to be saying my resources are fine.

Is there any way I can get things moving faster?

Thank You
Susan

Having 10 instances of Word running might be the problem even though Windows reports no resource issues. Windows has been known to mis-report.

Try to limit how many Word docs you have running at the same time.

Thank you. I will give it a try...(mis-report..hmmm...starting to understand Matilda Gates

But I see what is slowing everything down. That every small change I make it "re-paginates" - Now I don't need this every time. Is there a way to tell Word not to repaginate unless I ask it to do so?

To turn off repagination see How to Speed Up Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010 . It works with my Word 2019 so I expect it will work with your Word 2013.

Word can open multiple instances or multiple files in one instance. It is more efficient if all the documents are opened in the one instance of Word.

When you have a document over 300 pages, it is important that you have minimised the formatting overheads by using styles and very rarely applying local formatting. If your repagination is still an issue then you should change your view to Draft View as this lessens the overhead of repagination (but doesn't completely alleviate it). Follow the link provided in the earlier post by wiganken for other tips to speed up your editing.

__________________
Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Be aware, too, that tables - especially tables with many cells - impose a significant performance hit on Word. Another performance hog are Word's built-in Tables of Contents.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Another thing you can try is to update your OS from Windows 8 to Windows 10 if your machine is compatible. Windows 8 is nowhere near as stable as Windows 10.

Try working in draft view.


I also agree that style-based formatting will speed up responsiveness. Importance of Styles in Word

Neither the OS nor the number of Word instances is likely to be at all relevant.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]