Word 2004 slow as ever or is it just me?

[Mtn Tamale]

I've had Word 2001, Word V.X, and now Word 2004, and generally I've seen bugs slowly wane, but is it just me, or is Word really slow? All these glowing reviews everywhere would make one think that Office 2004 was a blessing for Mac users...better than on a PC etc etc. But in each of the version I've had, Word can't seem to keep up with the most important function on a Wordprocessor...my keyboard and mouse input. Now I've had the various versions installed on an iMac G4 800mhz, an ALPbook 1.25, and an eMac 1gig, but I've continually had pretty bad responsiveness.

Does anyone else have this issue? The reviewers never seem to mention it. What I'm talking about exactly is that when doing any real wordprocessing like typing a paper, I regularly get cursor lag of up to 2 seconds, where I've typed an entire word or so, look at the screen and wonder where my word is, then it suddenly appears. This happens with the mouse cursor sometimes too.

Any suggestions? This is extremely annoying. I made my wife switch to the Mac, so now our whole house is Apple, and only this and printer driver issues keep getting me ear-fulls about why we didn't keep our one of our Dells.

[Brize]

I experience the same problem with Word 2004 on a Dual 2.0 G5. The lag is very frustrating.

[spookykids]

Hmm, this is odd. Granted, word is in actuality a slow program, but the laggyness youre talking about vanished in this newest version. The typing keeps up with me as fast as I type and it doesnt really lag when selecting options or messing around a bit.

And I have the exact same iMac as your, so the machine shouldnt really be a huge difference.

[fwhh]

I had the same problem. The performace of my Word v.X. improved a lot after disabling the Option "Grammatik während der Eingabe überprüfen" (shout be something like "Check grammar while typing") in Word->Options->Spelling&Grammar.
Hopefully this works for you too.

[Horrortaxi]

I used the Office 2004 Test Drive just to check out the new bloat--er, features (pointless by the way) and I didn't notice the problem of typing faster than it would display. This was a huge annoyance in Office .x. Worse was that when I couldn't see what I was typing anymore I made more mistakes. When my type would finally appear I'd back up to make corrections and it would autocorrect.

"Real" word processing, like typing a paper for school can be done easily in TextEdit if you're using APA style or something else that doesn't require footnotes on every page. People laugh at me when I suggest they use TextEdit and I don't know why. Because it's free? In that case I guess Word would have to be a zillion times better because it costs a zillion times more. We'll ignore the fact that the printed output will look the same.

Oh, and what printer driver problem are you referring to?

[cropsy]

It seems OK on my 1.2ghz iBook, with iTunes, Safari, Entourage & Messenger running.

[Zaty]

I think that Word X was a bit faster, but perhaps it's just my imagination.

[superbovine]

i didn't find any lag while typing in word 2004, but i did find the the load time with the splash screen took a bit longer. i upgraded my ram, and that helped a bit.

[emw]

I've found that switching from Page Layout View to Normal View improves performance as well.

[PlaceofDis]

the only time i experience any lag is when it is checking for spelling and grammar as i type, if you disable these it should run much faster, also if you turn off auto correct it will speed things up a bit

[BornAgainMac]

I had no problems on my powerbook or G5 or iBook G3. It seemed as fast as the Windows version except for scrolling. The fast scrolling in Windows is more of a curse than a blessing. I wonder if it's a memory issue.

[Jovian9]

I have had zero problems with 2004 coming from v.X. The speed seems similar (to v.X) on my 17" iMac 1GHz 768MB RAM and on my 17" PB 1.33GHz 1GB RAM. The only difference (performance wise) I notice b/t the 2 is that when v.X was introduced it took about a year of updates from m$ to stop the program from unexpectedly quitting all of the time.......2004 has yet to quit on me.

[Mtn Tamale]

The real question is why is it different for different people? It clearly isn't hardware related.

Is grammar and spell checking really soooo slow that even on a Dual 2 G5 Word can have these responsiveness problems?

I'm going to turn those features off and retype part of a paper I finished last week and see what the deal is. But why don't reviewers discuss this? Clearly Word 2004 isn't superior to Word on Windows with this kind of sluggishness, if it is a flaw with Word.

Any other thoughts? I feel like this should be a big deal and get some exposure. MS should fix this if I'm not off base.

[Horrortaxi]

I've found that switching from Page Layout View to Normal View improves performance as well.
Switching to AppleWorks did wonders for my performance.

[wowoah]

Typing seems way faster than with v.X for my Mac (TiBook 1GHz 768MB). Scrolling, however, is so freaking slow, and I've run into a more than a few frustrating bugs. I keep checking MS's website for a patch or update, but nothing yet. :(

[MikeLaRiviere]

Did you buy Word 2004 or did you download it off BitTorrent? I have seen both versions in action, and I find that the licensed version works much better. I'm not accusing you of anything; rather, I'm just saying that when I installed it from a Microsoft CD (legally), I've found that it runs faster, faster than X, and in fact, faster than the Windows version. I'm pretty impressed.

Mike LaRiviere

[Fafnir]

Did you buy Word 2004 or did you download it off BitTorrent? I have seen both versions in action, and I find that the licensed version works much better. I'm not accusing you of anything; rather, I'm just saying that when I installed it from a Microsoft CD (legally), I've found that it runs faster, faster than X, and in fact, faster than the Windows version. I'm pretty impressed.

Mike LaRiviere

How exactly do you think that M$ can pull that off?

[Fafnir]

BTW I have Word 2004, but I usually end up using Word 98 because it runs a whole bunch faster (after classic has started up), though you have to pretty much turn off the dock to use it. At least there is a shortcut for that: Apple-Option-D.

[Mtn Tamale]

Nope, all versions of Office have been fully licensed versions. In fact, I don't have any weird software hacks, or even much free or shareware for that matter on my systems. I certainly don't have anything that changes the Operating system or its behavior or appearance, except for Sharepoints.

So that isn't a factor in my case.

[Mark James]

Is anyone using Entourage 2004? Is it any quicker than before?

I like Entourage's functionality, but the X.v version was incredibly slow at moving/deleting emails on my work Mac (450MHz graphite G4 with 1GB of SDRAM, so nothing great but still...)

I gave up and moved to Mail, which is infinitely snappier but the search facility is poor and the inability to display a 'cc column' is a major pain.

[MikeLaRiviere]

How exactly do you think that M$ can pull that off?

I didn't mean to imply that Microsoft intended such a scheme. If, somehow, they did, I would be most impressed! However, I'm wondering if packaging the files, or perhaps simply these files in particular, caused some sort of misoptimization. I installed via the "Install" program; I didn't drag-and-drop. I'm curious as to whether this causes the discrepancy. Did users who find it slow drag-and-drop install? Did users who find it fast execute the install program?

Mike LaRiviere

[FoxyKaye]

Word 2004 was pretty slow for me as well - I tried turning off the "auto word count" feature (someone suggested this on a previous thread) and it speeded it up a little. But basically, for a word processor, Word 2004 is really sluggish and quite bloated in my experience. I actually switched back to Office X, since I don't use Entourage and the changes to Excel seemed minimal.

A few folks have written in that the 2004 version of Word has better support for foreign languages (including Japanese and Chinese), however, as an English language user I can't tell the difference between it and Word X.

[AmigoMac]

Really disgusting, I can't feel that inspired to use it most of the time as I thought I would before buying it, the only think that keeps Office 2004 in my iBook is Notebook, it has really helped me to write a lot of things and selecting chapters for my notes but the fact that it doesn't display the "audio flag" does SUCK :mad:, I mean, you have to go with the mouse and look where you recorded... it should be displayed as Notetaker does...

I have some data-sheets which contain some CAD pictures and those are not displayed correctly, but word X shows them :mad: , had to go back to word X just to be in time a report for a customer, windows office 2000 displays them, but my brand new office 2004 doesn't :eek:

[Brize]

Did users who find it slow drag-and-drop install? Did users who find it fast execute the install program?

No, it's pretty slow for me and I used the install program on the disc.

[AmigoMac]

Why the H*LL does word 2004 use ~10% of CPU if it has not been used since 4 hours ago... any idea?

[wcj912]

I find Word 2004 to be the most unstable microsoft program I have EVER used. I have to restart Word because of 'Application not Responding' at least every ten minutes.Iguess thats Micro$oft for you - maximum price/minumum effort. Currently waiting for the next patch (and probably a patch to patch that patch). :(

[Expedition]

Does anybody know of any other application (besides Word 2004) that uses up to 50% of CPU cycles (on a 1.5Ghz PB) while doing nothing (all changes to the open document are changed and Word 2004 is hidden)??? :confused: EVERY other app (including the other Microsoft Office apps such as Excel and PowerPoint) are using 0 to 0.5% of CPU power at maximum under similar circumstances... :cool:

[numark]

Is anyone using Entourage 2004? Is it any quicker than before?

I just picked up Office 2004 from our campus bookstore, and while Entourage does seem much faster and more responsive, it's taken a huge step back in my opinion. It now defaults to an awful-looking preview pane (which can be disabled thankfully). Even worse, however, is that it forces you to view your email not in a long list like Entourage X does, but instead under these headings labeled "Today", "Yesterday", "August 31st", etc. It wastes a good amount of space on the screen while adding nothing to my experience (I'm quicker just looking at the "Sent On" column as in Entourage X). I still haven't found a way to disable this setting either.

[me_94501]

I just picked up a copy yesterday (also from the campus store). Word isn't the fastest app out there to say the least. However, it doesn't seem to be absolutely horrible.

Entourage on the other hand, I have no idea what they were trying to accomplish there.

[Expedition]

I believe that the problem is not "Word-2004-is-slow" but rather its wasteful usage of CPU resources (even if no document at all is open and Word is hidden). How can this happen??? Has anybody an idea??? (the paranoids will probably spot Microsoft's strategy, which is to make the Mac platform unattractive...it only takes a small app that consumes all CPU power...) :rolleyes: :o

[Expedition]

:mad:

Word uses 100% CPU while doing nothing...what is going on here???? :mad:

Is there ONE capable programmer at Microsoft??? I just can't believe it!

[JFreak]

in my experience word v.X was good enough when the 1.5 upgrade was applied. i ran the test drive for a moment and instantly felt that the new version was too slow (compared to the v.X).

one would think that a 1.25GHz powerbook would have enough power to run a word processor ;) apparently not microsoft's new one...

[BlankStar]

Word & Excel 2004 are running smooth here on my 867Mhz G4 PowerBook (640MB RAM)

don't take long to load. (5 sec max) and work real smooth (even with the fading menu's and stuff)

Don't got any bad eXPerience with it :p

[Fat_Tonie]

Works fine on a G3 iBook. Sad thing is that so many people bash Microsoft, most of it true, but they do have some redeeming qualities such as cheap software. My wife was able to get Office 2004 from her university for $8 due to a license agreement the school has with Microsoft.

[wide]

On my 500 MHz Pismo 256 RAM, Word v.X starts up in 5 secs and isn't slow at all with Safari and iChat open at the same time.

[ricebag]

Yeah, I outtype Word X, of course on a G3 500 ibook. It's really frustrating. If they do update Appleworks, there is no doubt what my default word processor would be.

(and could it have something to do with RAM? I don't have much...)

[tech4all]

(and could it have something to do with RAM? I don't have much...)

Doubt it. I have 1.5 GB ram on my G5 and am having similar issues with Word.

[BornAgainMac]

Doubt it. I have 1.5 GB ram on my G5 and am having similar issues with Word.

You need to have 1.6 GB of memory. :p

I wonder why some people don't have the problem with speed even with lesser hardware. I did a search on Google and Microsoft support site for answers and didn't find anything conclusive.

Word on my G5 doesn't go over 5% CPU usage with a 21 page document. I use all the default settings and I have 1 GB of memory. I noticed a delay with graphics appearing as I scroll thru the document quickly. I tried to type as fast as I could by pressing keys at random in the middle of the document and it was able to keep up easily.

Could it be that famous 'permissions' problem on Mac OS X?

[Fukui]

Why the H*LL does word 2004 use ~10% of CPU if it has not been used since 4 hours ago... any idea?
Its looking for other Office installs across your network (licence checking).
Thats why, even though your not doing anything, it is.

It takes 30+ percent of my CPU BTW.

[mjmare]

I'm afraid the slowness may be related to specific hardware, like my dual G5 2GHz (1GB mem). On my humble G3 iBook 800 MHz+512MB the same Word is running fine.

In Word 2004 the slowness is amazing: Even in a tiny document, just changing the header style of 1 line from, say, header 1 to 2, takes about 2 seconds! :eek:

I have already checked my file permissions on OS X 10.3.5.
I have turned of background spelling checker: no difference.
Office was installed with the installer.

Although I don't like Microsoft and its products (XP service pack2 just trashed my PC), it may not be entirely to blame. I've noticed the same slowness in Macromedia Fireworks and Dreamweaver.

[Expedition]

I'd like emphasize again: Word might be slow but more importantly it uses CPU power (at least 10% on my G4 1.5Ghz PowerBook) while doing nothing at all (regardless whether there is a doc open or not). This situation increasingly aggravates if the new balloon option to display changes is used: in this case Word will reproducibly (tested on differently configured PowerMacs as well iMacs) go up to 50-70% of CPU usage (regardless whether Word is activated or hidden to the dock)! Unplugging the network doesn't change anything (@Fukui). I do not want to bash Microsoft but Word has got a serious problem (I guess because they wanted to use as much code as possible from the Windows version...therefore the code hasn't been sufficiently adapted or optimised). As a comparison I've brought the new Nisus Writer Express 2.0, and funny enough Nisus Express with the same document as RTF uses at maximum 20% when actually used (scrolling through document for instance) but goes down to 0% immediately if there is no user-triggered action -- just as it should be!!!

[Fukui]

Unplugging the network doesn't change anything (@Fukui)
Well, I'm not making an excuse for MS or anything! But, its possible word is just a piece of junk... a necessary peice of junk :)

[busasa]

well.... for me, the 2004 is quite a leap over the v. x.. Word 2004 finally uses 0% cpu when idle at the bkground. The typing is also fairly smooth as there are no delays wutsoever. 2004 is a must program for me, because it's the only program that supports native unicode, and without it, there is no way i can edit or type chinese documents. The compatibility report thing is also helpful, as v. x often create documents base on its own format, and not in the pc world's format. I use a 1ghz pbook with 768 ram, hope that helps.

[Expedition]

well.... for me, the 2004 is quite a leap over the v. x.. Word 2004 finally uses 0% cpu when idle at the bkground

...hmmm... how reproducible is that finding? 0% when idle? I don't want to take a poll here but it'll be interesting to hear from others whether Word 2004 can indeed use 0% of CPU cycles while doing nothing/idle? :)