• Sluggish behavior (W2K 9.0.3821 SR-1)

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    WSCaesar3
    AskWoody Lounger
    April 5, 2002 at 6:15 pm #369220

    I use Word on a networked computer in a corporate/industrial setting. My computer is rather modern, with plenty of resources. (Fairly new Gateway, Athlon processor, 256+ megs of RAM…. In short, there appears to be no hardware explanation for the problem I’m about to describe.) I’ll open a Word document that includes a large table–the table makes up about 99 percent of the content of the file–and proceed to edit the document. Very soon, Word turns into a slug. I’ll key in a word, then I’ll sit and watch as the letters very slowly appear, one at a time. It’s like watching things happen in slow motion! Yes, I might have one or two other pages or applications open at the time, but I don’t see this behavior when I try to do the same thing on other machines that lack the hefty resources this machine one has. Any ideas? What can I check–say, on the Performance tab in Task Manager? Only rarely do I suffer a lock-up or crash–it just gets sluggish. Thanks for any tips you might offer.

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    • WSGary Frieder
      AskWoody Lounger
      April 5, 2002 at 11:52 pm #580868

      Lucas,

      This sounds ilke the table referred to in your other post.
      One possible explanation is that there is some kind of corruption in the document, localized somewhere in that table (you did mention in the other post that the table behaved weirdly).

      It might be worth the trouble to recreate this document, using a new table structure.

      Gary

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      • WSCaesar3
        AskWoody Lounger
        April 7, 2002 at 1:04 pm #581003

        It’s exactly the same table. (How’d you guess? grin ) But this problem occurs in other documents as well…but, if memory serves, it’s always in tables. So…maybe the problem is the tables themselves. As I mentioned, this particular table is just the latest in a long line of tables that have been in-breeding for about two years now. Maybe rebuilding from scratch would be the best solution. Thanks for the advice!

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        • WSPhil Rabichow
          AskWoody Lounger
          April 7, 2002 at 9:31 pm #581050

          Hi Lucas:
          I agree with Gary that it sounds like corruption. However, Word 2000 uses a much more complicated scheme for tables than earlier versions. That’s because you have more options, such as nesting. As a result, I’ve found the display to be somewhat slower, although not as bad as you describe.

          If this is happening to many documents, you might also check to make sure that your resources are OK & that you have the latest display drivers. If you’re on a network, that may be beyond your control.

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          • WSCaesar3
            AskWoody Lounger
            April 8, 2002 at 2:16 pm #581133

            Thanks, Phil! Yes, I’ve gotten lots of suggested fixes, and I’m going to try them when I return to work tomorrow. Thanks to all who contributed! The responses I get here are the reason I always recommend the Lounge to people who need help with Windows or Office. I do a little teaching (Word, PowerPoint, Windows), and I work for a major computer retailer. I mention the Lounge every chance I get.

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            • WSphanks
              AskWoody Lounger
              April 8, 2002 at 4:38 pm #581162

              We have encountered this problem many times in tables in our environment. What we have found is that the tables did not use styles and were heavily direct formatted – bold on and off, italics on and off, hard returns etc. and it was especially bad on any table that had an autonumbering column. We have somewhat salvaged poorly performing tables by selecting an entire column and applying a style that best fits the nature of the column – creating a style when necessary. Although Word boasts the ability to handle large tables, I have not been impressed – when pushed to play it often ends with sluggy tables. Our best remedy has been to take the info into Access because often times the reason for table structure was to be able to sort the info or categorize it is some way. If the info needed to report back into a Word format, we set up a merge document to do so. Anyway, good luck. I definitely feel for you – dealing with bad tables is not fun.

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            • WSHubert_NY
              AskWoody Lounger
              April 8, 2002 at 6:05 pm #581178

              One more thing to check–with your cursor in the Table, select Table | Options, on the “Table” tab, select “Options” and verify that “Automatically resize to fit contents” is NOT selected.

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            • WSHubert_NY
              AskWoody Lounger
              April 8, 2002 at 6:18 pm #581179

              ooops. I meant click on the menu item Table | Properties.

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    • WSsjtmiller
      AskWoody Lounger
      April 10, 2002 at 8:49 pm #581191

      Another issue might be if you have “Allow row to break across pages” checked. With this attribute checked, Word will slow down considerably when having to constantly manage row breaking.

      Also, borders and shading can slow performance.

      I believe this is somehow a 2000 issue, though I can’t find my reference to that.

      One solution would be to split the table, do your edits in a smaller portion and then simply delete the paragraph mark splitting the table and rejoin.

      Hope this helps!

      SJ Miller

      The Technet article is http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?…b;EN-US;q220353%5B/url%5D

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      • WSrua
        AskWoody Lounger
        April 17, 2002 at 2:31 am #582859

        We have exactly this problem with some large table documents. I looked at the Microsoft article mentioned and tried converting to rtf and then back to Word format. What happened is that when in rtf format, the table behaved beautifully (ie with no noticeable delay). However, once converted, the doc file reverted to its original behaviour. (Note that the delay behaviour is only within the table. Scrolling to the end of the document and typing normal text is fine) Even stranger, if I leave the document open, after about 20 minutes I can edit within the table with no time delay at all. This all happens when document is stored on a network drive. If I copy it to the c: drive, once again, there is no time delay.

        I have looked at all the Table Properties that I can think of and not found anything that helps. Any more ideas would be greatly appreciated.

        Ruth confused

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        • WSPhil Rabichow
          AskWoody Lounger
          April 17, 2002 at 6:27 am #582883

          Hi Ruth:
          There was another thread with some suggestions. See this post

          Hope this helps.

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          • WSrua
            AskWoody Lounger
            April 17, 2002 at 7:00 am #582885

            Thanks for this Phil. I had tried most of those things already. I just tried converting to text and then back to a table and initially it seemed to help. However, once closed and reopened, it reverted to the old sluggish behaviour. I think we’ll have to live with it, placing things temporarily on c: drive for particularly bad cases.

            Ruth

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            • WSPhil Rabichow
              AskWoody Lounger
              April 17, 2002 at 10:41 pm #583057

              Hi Ruth:
              For what it’s worth, Word 2k just has that problem. Tables are extremely complex objects & with Word 2K’s ability to nest tables, they can really slow things down. I notice it on a 40 page document that consists of a 3 column table, although it doesn’t sound as bad as yours.

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