What can you do when Microsoft Word is working like treacle?
There are a few things you can check if you're working in Word and it seems to be really slow.
Have you got any (large) images in your document?
Oftentimes we don't even notice how large the images we're using are; if you're working with images from an image library these can be super high quality images, that could be used for billboard advertising and are way more detailed than you need for your document. And Word really doesn't like working with such large images, so what can you do:
- Shrinking them to a size that Word can better handle (a few 100Kb for example) will make all the difference. You can use an online tool like http://www.simpleimageresizer.com to do this for free.
- If you're being sent images from a creative agency, ask for them to be compressed so that they are suitable for putting in a Word document.
- On a PC, go to File > Options > Advanced and make sure that Do not compress images in file is turned Off for the document (you may like to set it for All documents) in the Image Size and Quality section.
- On a Mac, go to Word > Preferences... > Edit and make sure that Do not compress images in file is turned Off for the document (you may like to set it for All documents) in the Image Size and Quality section.
Do you have a lot of other applications running?
If you're running a lot of other applications, if you don't need them shut them down.
Are you signed into OneDrive and on a patchy internet connection?
If you are working on a document from OneDrive, it will be regularlary saved automatically in the background. If there is a problem doing this, you may experience stuttering performance in word.
- Sign out of OneDrive (to stop the background upload) but do remember to sign back in when you are on a better internet connection.