Microsoft Word slow as story gets longer

[BDSMGromit]

Hello, I'm writing a new story, it's currently 42k words long, when finished I expect it to be somewhere around 50k in length, then i will break it up into chapters. I've been noticing as the story gets longer, Microsoft Word responses slower and slower to spelling and text corrections. Has anyone else noticed anything similar. The computer I have only a few years old, it should be more than powerful enough to handle a word editor. Has anyone else noticed the same? Or is it just me?

 

[Rustyoznail]

Check if track changes is turned on. That slows things down, and bloats the file size.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Word gets worse, the longer the document. It's amazing how bad it gets, sometimes. That's why I avoid using it whenever it isn't required.

-Rocco

 

[TheRedChamber]

Others may suggest fixes. I find by the time you get to 20k words its best to split into parts anyway, especially of you are looking at it with an eye to story structure. I cant find anything once the story gets too big.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

If you're going to split it, split it.

But also, split from Word. Split to LibreOffice.

 

[SchnellFick]

Depending on your word version... The current ones use the cloud for grammar and spelling. For that they transmit all that changed. If you add a chapter title, all beyond that moves... The local check is lousy, the online only barely better. So, I have disabled the built in check completely and use grammarly once I've written a few thousand new words.

My longest text is around 200k words right now. But most of my stories are around 80k to 100k. You could of course change to real writer programs like scrivener.

 

[Duleigh]

Hello, I'm writing a new story, it's currently 42k words long, when finished I expect it to be somewhere around 50k in length, then i will break it up into chapters. I've been noticing as the story gets longer, Microsoft Word responses slower and slower to spelling and text corrections. Has anyone else noticed anything similar. The computer I have only a few years old, it should be more than powerful enough to handle a word editor. Has anyone else noticed the same? Or is it just me?

It's your computer.

Word is MUCH more than a word editor, it's the most massive, capable, publishing tool in the world. Believe me, I used to work for Microsoft supporting MS word, I know what is has under the hood, and that was years ago. It was a humongous juggernaut back then and it's capabilities have increased in the past decades. It is without a doubt the most capable publishing tool on the face of the earth and I doubt you've used more than 10% of it's capabilities. I ended getting a top of the line Gaming PC just because I work with 100k word novels all the time, and still when you pass the 50k word mark it slows down.

if it's that bad your options are: divide up your stories into 25k word chunks, get a better PC maxed out on RAM, or use a cheesy text editor with training wheels like LibreOffice.

 

[lovecraft68]

I have an old version of word on a lap top that is still running windows seven. I don't have these problems with it. But do see it when I decide to write on the PC I bought last year that has the latest versions and windows 11

 

[TheRedChamber]

Word is MUCH more than a word editor, ...and I doubt you've used more than 10% of it's capabilities.

What you are telling me is that its lost its focus and is overdesigned and irrelevant to most users

I ended getting a top of the line Gaming PC just because I work with 100k word novels all the time, and still when you pass the 50k word mark

And this is the result

, or use a cheesy text editor with training wheels like LibreOffice.

Given our choices for formatting are bold and italics on Literotica, we dont really need more.

 

[StillStunned]

As a professional editor, I work with large documents, including images and weird formatting and, of course, Track Changes. My computer is pretty basic, "for word processing and Internet". I've never had any problems with Word being slow.

Of course I don't store porn on my computer, so that might be a factor.

 

[TheLobster]

Of course I don't store porn on my computer, so that might be a factor.

Mere consumer-grade HDDs are obviously insufficient for a connoisseur of your caliber.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Of course I don't store porn on my computer, so that might be a factor.

Where do you store it

 

[StillStunned]

Where do you store it

I have a troupe of actors on retainer to act out my favourite scenes for me.

(Ooo, story idea!)

 

[TheRedChamber]

I have a troupe of actors on retainer to act out my favourite scenes for me.

(Ooo, story idea!)

And actresses? Or is it all very, ahem, Shakespearian...

 

[StillStunned]

And actresses? Or is it all very, ahem, Shakespearian...

After a few too many "Is this a dagger I see before me?" moments I decided to include actresses too.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

And actresses? Or is it all very, ahem, Shakespearian...

In 2024, "actor" includes all genders, just like "poet". Do you still refer to "poetesses" and "sculptresses"?

-Annie

 

[TheRedChamber]

In 2024, "actor" includes all genders,

Not if theres a humorous misunderstanding to be made it doesn't.

And if I want someone to make a marble statue of Cleopatra or wax lyrical about her beauty and aspy downfall the gender of the person I hire is irrelevant. If I want someone to play her (in StillStunned dirty plays or otherwise), the gender is relevant...

 

[MrStill]

And actresses? Or is it all very, ahem, Shakespearian...

Exit, chased by a bare...

 

[TheRedChamber]

Exit, chased by a bare...

Bear also works to be honest...

 

[Wonderer67]

Word gets clunkier and funkier the longer the doc. I don’t know if new versions are any better - I used to create documentation for work, but those had screen shots and tables and shit.

 

[TheLobster]

Kids these days and their “Words” and “LibreOffices” and “Scriveners”… My text editor takes two rods to the hogshead plain text, and only plain text, and that’s the way I likes it!

 

[BDSMGromit]

> It's your computer.

I find that hard to believe. I have an i7-13700f processor with 32 GB memory, not top-of-the-line, but it's a decent system.

I'm running Word 2013 and Grammarly together; they pick up most spelling and grammar errors. I am not a fan of cloud computing and storage; I feel if you trust them with your data, you lose control of it. I had a malware instructor who stored malware samples on a Google Drive to teach students to analyze malware; Google detected the malware and deleted his entire online drive. He lost irreplaceable data because he trusted it would be secured online, and there was nothing he could do.

Thank you for the feedback, I will start splitting the story into smaller chapters for Publishing. I'll have to look at other word processors.

 

[ronde]

I have an old version of word on a lap top that is still running windows seven. I don't have these problems with it. But do see it when I decide to write on the PC I bought last year that has the latest versions and windows 11

I write in Word 97 that I've had since 1993 and it works great. I've a few stories that are in the 60k word range and Word 97 handles them as well as a story of 4k words other than it takes longer to scroll down through the longer works.

I think the problem with all software is that in order to sell, it has to be both different and the same as older software. If the operation of the software gets much different, users have to be retrained and in general, it has to run on older operating systems because not everybody changes computers every year. What that means is any software program tends to grow in both file size as well as the resources it uses when operating as it is "improved".

I've also used Word released in 2007 and found that I didn't use most of the capabilities of the newest version because I had no need to. I also found that I was much slower in navigating the ribbons than with the standard toolbars. I suppose my speed would have improved over time, but I didn't see a need to fix what wasn't broken.

 

[nice90sguy]

In answer to the OP's question: Word slows down a lot if you're using autosave and OneDrive. Make sure your file is local.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

As a professional editor, I work with large documents, including images and weird formatting and, of course, Track Changes. My computer is pretty basic, "for word processing and Internet". I've never had any problems with Word being slow.

Of course I don't store porn on my computer, so that might be a factor.

So, where do you store your porn??


To the point? I also use Word. Performance has never been an issue.