Large document is sluggish and its pictures not visible in Web Layout

Question

I recently upgraded Office from 2010 to 2013. I have a large (700 pages) and complex document that contains text and pictures (inserted as In-Line With Text). The document has two problems:

1) Pictures are no longer visible in Word 2013. I noticed that if I change the view from Web Layout (which is the most suitable view for this particular document) to Print Layout, then the pictures become visible. The following workarounds did not help: - Changing the position/wrapping of the pictures (which are clickable elements, if all white) - using the "convert to latest document format"option (the document is right now in 2013 docx format)

2) In addition, Word reacts very slowly when I edit this document; all actions are very sluggish, with a delay of about 2 seconds, which is frustrating. The following are causes that I've ruled out, or workarounds that don't help for this problem:

• PC performance: same problems affect this doc when opened on other PCs, with other Windows and Word versions
• deleting contents from it till the document remains very small doesn't help
• copy and paste everything into a new document doesn't help
• save as another document (still docx format, or word 2003 DOC format; maitaining compatibility or not) doesn't help

The only workarounds that help (speed of operation becomes normal) are: - deleting most of the contents of the document reduces the sluggishness - viewing the document in Print Layout somewhat reduces the sluggishness

Any suggestions what I can try to get rid of these 2 problems - which seem to be related - for my document?

Answer 1

I too had this problem with a large document - Word 2013 was sluggish and not displaying pictures in web layout. The document was about 8 MB and 900 pages.

After some investigation I concluded this is a deficiency in Word's rendering of web layout.

For the record:

1. Various of ways of 'tidying up' the document had no effect (saving to rtf format and opening the rtf file; opening and saving in LibreOffice as docx and opening the docx file; repeating but using odt format; copying without the final pargraph mark; etc)
2. LibreOffice, although sluggish, was able to render the document in web layout
3. Using the old doc format allowed Word to render OK
4. Images display correctly near the start of the document
5. Splitting the document into subdocuments and a master shows the same problem

The clincher for me was discovering that the same picture inserted at successive locations rendered squashed up and then not at all. Here's a screenshot from the place in the document where things go wrong.

So there is a point in the document beyond which images do not render, as though a limit has been reached and an attempt is made to render the image by squashing it vertically. The limit varies with the pane size for displaying the document e.g. if the navigation pane is displayed the limit on image displaying is moved up the document.

This is a bug in Word's image rendering in Web Layout of the later file format.

In my case, since I wanted to use Word rather than switch to LibreOffice, and use docx rather than doc format, I split the document into several separate smaller documents; these display images OK although are a little inconvenient.

Answer 2

The long thread Word 2013: Extremely slow saving and pasting plain text in long documents, from January 2013, contains some workarounds that worked for some people.

Here is the list. I suggest to try them one-by-one and undo the ones that do not help:

1. Save As in "Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc)" format
2. Save the document in RTF file format, open a new Word 2013 document and import the RTF file, then save in Word 2013 format
3. Disable hardware acceleration in "Advanced settings"
4. Disable "Allow Background saves" (some people report that enabling Always create a backup on save also helps)
5. Turn off Background Repagination
6. Reduce the size of included pictures
7. Break apart the document and only rejoin the pieces when printing.
   See these references for master-subdocuments in Word :
   1. Understanding Master and Subdocuments
   2. Creating a Master Document Using Existing Subdocuments
8. Check add-ins in File / Options / Add-ins / Manage / COM Add-ins, and disable the ones you don't use. You can launch Winword with the parameter /safe to work without any add-in.
9. Change the default printer to a virtual PDF printer
10. Copy-paste the document to a new Word 2013 document
11. Disable "Spelling and Grammar Check"
12. Upgrade to Office 2016
13. Get a faster computer with more memory

The article 10 Microsoft Word 2013 headaches and how to cure them might also be useful.

Answer 3

1. Open the .docx with Libre Office writer
2. Click on File/Save as and in the drop down Save as type choose the .docx format.
3. In the alert, choose Use Office Open XML Text Format (do not choose ODF Format).
4. Open the .docx in MS Word.
5. If necessary, reapply your template: File/Options/Add-Ins in the drop-down Manage (bottom), select Templates and Go. Then choose your templates, check Automatically update document styles and click Ok
6. If necessary, reapply the style to the footnote references : in the style ribbon, right click on Footnote Reference and click on Select All, wait for MS Word to select all your footnote references and then click on the Footnoote Reference style (this reapply the style to all the footnore references).
7. If necessary, do step 6 but with Endnote Reference

This works because Libre Office Writer cleans the code of the .docx