Chicago
Track Your Order
0
6 Ways to Speed Up Your Word Document
Heavy Word documents can quickly become sluggish, especially if you have used lots of images, formatting, and tables. If you're getting close to your deadline and Word is doing its best to make you late, check out these tips to make your document run more smoothly.
While the following tips may only have a minimal impact on your document's speed when implemented individually, using the suggestions collectively will significantly reduce your file size and let your file run more quickly.
Compress Images
The default image resolution for images in Word is 220 PPI (pixels per inch). While having a small number of images at this resolution is unlikely to slow down your Word document alone, having lots of images might. So, if you're struggling with a sluggish document, try compressing your images.
Compressing images reduces their PPI and, thus, their quality. So, you might decide to compress only certain images, such as those containing less detail, while keeping others at their default resolution. To compress a single image, select the picture, and click "Compress Pictures" in the Picture Format tab.
Now, in the Compress Pictures dialog box, ensure "Apply Only To This Picture" is checked, and select the appropriate resolution. 150 PPI will significantly reduce the size without lowering the quality of your image too much—you might find that 96 PPI is too low. Then, click "OK."
If you decide that you want to compress all pictures (and all pictures that you add to the document in the future), click File > Options, and go to the "Advanced" tab in the menu. Then, scroll down to the Image Size And Quality section, and decide whether you want the change you're about to make to apply to this document only or to all future documents. Then, click the "Default Resolution" down arrow, choose a size that works for you, and click "OK."
Resolve, Hide, or Delete Comments
Comments are a handy way to add notes to a Word document without affecting the content. However, if you have lots of comments in a large Word document, they can add to your document's size and significantly reduce its processing speed.
There are three ways to address this. The first is to resolve a comment by clicking the three dots, and choosing "Resolve Thread." This will remove the comment from view, though a small bubble icon will remain next to the text to show you that a thread was previously initiated at that part of the document.
You can also hide all comments, which not only has the potential to speed up your Word document, but also removes clutter from your screen. To do this, click the top half of the "Show Comments" button in the Review tab, and the comments will disappear. Again, a bubble icon next to the text will quietly remind you that there is a comment nearby. Simply click the same button again if you want to display the comments.
The third option is to delete the comments altogether. While this will reduce your file size even more, comments can be useful for later reference, and deleting the comments removes all traces of their existence.
You can delete a single comment by clicking the three dots and selecting "Delete Thread."
Alternatively, you can delete all comments or only the resolved comments in the Review tab.
Use Styles (And Not Direct Formatting)
Although using Styles and direct formatting might look the same in a document, having lots of direct formatting slows Word down as there is much more for the program to process.
Each time you end a paragraph and press Enter, Word inserts a non-printing paragraph marker (which you can show or hide by clicking "¶" in the ribbon). Each paragraph marker holds all the formatting for that paragraph. So, if you have a paragraph that is manually formatted with an indentation, spacing before the paragraph, spacing after the paragraph, Calibri 12 pt font, and bold, all of that formatting will be contained within that paragraph marker. However, if you apply the same details to the same paragraph using Word's Styles, the paragraph marker only needs to contain the Style name, as that Style defines all the formatting.
To test this, we created two 600-page documents containing exactly the same text, and formatted one with direct formatting and the other using a Style. The document we formatted manually was 83 KB, while the document with Style formatting was 76 KB.
Be Aware of the Impact of Tables
Word's tables are notorious for causing problems, whether due to the issues caused when they're moved and resized, the problems they create when they span more than one page, or the impact they have on the size of your document (and, thus, the document's speed).
One cause of your sluggish Word document might be that you have too many tables. There are two ways to tackle this issue.
First, try to avoid over-formatting your tables. It might be tempting to use swanky colors and dotted border lines, but every formatting change you make will increase the size of your Word document. Instead, opt for one of Word's simpler pre-designed Table Styles. To access these, click anywhere in your table, and open the "Table Design" tab. Then, choose one of the plain Table Styles. Doing this each time you have a table in your document will ensure consistency and minimize the impact of your tables.
A second option is to remove the table altogether, while keeping its contents. This is particularly useful if you don't necessarily need to display the lines between each cell, and the cells don't contain much data. With your cursor anywhere in the table, open the "Layout" tab (there are two tabs with this name—make sure you choose the one on the right!), and click "Convert To Text." Then, in the dialog box that opens, check "Tabs," and click "OK."
This will maintain the shape of your table while removing any table formatting. Turning on the non-printing characters ("¶") in the Home tab will show you the tab markers that help Word to keep text laid out in this way.
Turn off AutoSave
Microsoft's AutoSave is a great safety net, as Word automatically backs up your document to your OneDrive cloud as you go. However, since AutoSave works continuously in the background, uploading the latest changes every few seconds, it can cause Word to slow down, especially if you have a heavy document.
To disable AutoSave, click the AutoSave toggle in the top-left corner of your Word document. If you can't see the AutoSave toggle, click the Quick Access Toolbar down arrow, and ensure "Automatically Save" is checked.
If you turn off AutoSave, you're advised to manually save your work every few minutes. Failing to do could lead you to losing your work if your computer crashes.
Check for Add-ins and Macros
While you can use Word as a simple word processor, you can also create macros and use add-ins to enable more features and functions. However, using these more advanced tools significantly adds to your document's workload, and could be the reason why your file is running slowly.
Macros
Macros let you bunch together a series of commands to execute a task with a single click or keyboard shortcut. To check which macros you have enabled in your Word document, click the "Macros" button in the View tab. This will bring up a dialog box, where you can view, edit, and—importantly—delete any macros. Even though deleting a macro means you might lose some automation, it will likely speed up your document significantly.
Add-ins
Add-ins are custom tools you can add to Word that enable you to do more with the program. For example, you can add a Wikipedia add-in or a third-party translator to give you more flexibility in your work. However, since you're effectively adding another program to Word, these affect its performance hugely.
To see whether you have add-ins installed, click the "Add-ins" icon on the Home tab, and any add-ins will show in the sidebar below.
Then, to remove an add-in, click "More Add-ins."
In the Office Add-ins window, click "My Add-ins," and click the three dots next to whichever add-in you want to delete. Finally, click "Remove."
This will remove the add-in from your Microsoft account, affecting all Office applications compatible with this add-in.
Now that you've sped up your Word document, check out our top tips for speeding up your Microsoft Word workflow.
