Forum Discussion
Word keeps freezing when editing long document with heavy revisions
I'm checking the copy editor's edits on my most recent book. The document is about125,000 words long and all the edits have been done using "track changes", so I can see them and respond. On my home PC the document was freezing every time I made an edit. I kept getting "Not responding" and had to wait for a second or two before I could make the change. I opened the same document on my work laptop this morning: no problems at all!
Home PC is a 12 Gen Core i5-12600, 16GB of fast RAM, running of a fast SSD, with an Nvidia RTX 4070 card, running Windows 11. Work is a slightly less powerful laptop, running Windows 10. Same version of Word on both.
Any idea what might be causing this? I have up to date anti-virus on both computers and have checked for malware, etc.
Thanks, Jim
5 Replies
No one here can tell you exactly what is happening.
First, track changes to that extent makes for an extremely complex document file. What surprises me is that the document does not freeze on both.
Consider, on your home machine, if you do not need to track your own changes, turning off track changes.
Try opening Word in safe mode, as a diagnostic step, and see if it is any more nimble. It may be that an Add-In is slowing things down on your home computer.
Open Office apps in safe mode on a Windows PC - Microsoft Office
This is months later, and you have likely already solved your issues. However, I have just solved this for myself today, and I want to give other people who come to this thread some advice:
1. If you use Norton 360, turn off script controls for Word. You can see how to do that here: https://support.norton.com/sp/en/au/home/current/solutions/v132996618?displang=iso3%3Aeng&helpid=disarm_faq&inid=hho_star_support_disarm_faq&ssdcat=325
2. If you have a Grammarly add-on (as I do), turn off its run in the background feature. Go to the Grammarly menu>Settings (far right under log out) >disable run in background and open by default. After this, close and reopen your Word program.
3. Turn off Text Predictions. Right click the grey bar at the bottom of your screen. Text predictions is about halfway up. Toggle it so that there is no checkmark.
4. If this hasn't worked, go to Apps & Features (in Windows), scroll to Office 365, right click, click on modify, run an online repair, and restart your computer when it's done.
This did it for me. I regularly work on >250 page documents that wind up with >4000 changes. The slowdown was becoming a pain.
Good luck!Thanks for trying to help, but none of these suggestions helped: I don't use Norton at work, but am now having the same problems there. Don't use Grammarly or any other add-ons. Text predictions were already off and repairing Office didn't make a difference. Clearly the file itself is somehow borked by the sheer number of changes being tracked. But, happily, the book is now finished and typeset so I don't need to open the file again (and the next book is a fair way off) so ther problem isn't currently affecting me.
