Microsoft Word 2008 slow?

[Cheffy Dave]

I don't understand this - my office 2008 works perfectly, and is much faster than 2004 - not that I have complaints about that, I just wonder why some people are having problems and some arn't

Don't know. but I have 4 GB of Ram, and it takes 30 seconds to open Word I was told it had something to do with word loading all the fonts when it opens, so I went with minimalist selections of fonts, and it made no difference
Crap/bloatware was why I went to the Mac, so now I'm using Neo Office and loving it. Buh Bye forever MS!

 

[Mikebuzzsaw]

Wish they could push out more updates for word.

 

[Bakey]

I run Suitcase on my MacBookPro (don't all creatives?)

No they don't!

 

[duncanapple]

I agree with all of the above. I have Mac Office 2004 and would have been perfectly content with not upgrading, but I thought, owning an intel mac, that 08 would be a smart move b/c it would run faster and be more compatible with the .xdoc (.xxls, etc) formats. I know there are converters but I figured what the heck.

It ended up running much slower than 04 (even after all the latest updates) and the big gripe (as I share one of my three licenses to my brother who is still in college, and another with my gf who is working on an MBA) is that excel doesn't have the analysis tool pack. What a load! Most people don't use this, sure. But most STUDENTS (and I have the student edition) DO and leaving it out is unacceptable seeing that 04 had it. I also understand the concept of if you dont like it dont buy it, but who could have known that without first buying it, opening it, and using it. Sorta hard to return it after you install it.

 

[chatuchak]

I just installed microsoft word....it is a little slow...i.e. the typing shows up a split second after i type, instead of instantaneous...I think because of the spelling/grammar checking. anyone else witness this?

I just started using Word myself on MBA a few days ago, noticed exactly the same thing... Even if the auto-check is off, the letters still appear a bit slow.

 

[pooja-53]

Word so slow

Yes Word 2008 for Mac is awful, a real pain and almost unusable. I hate it now and desperate to find soemthing else. I am thinking I will move to iWork. I wish I understood why it was so bad though. It also takes nearly 1 minute to save a new file. Exasperating! Perhaps someone can explain it to me.

 

[davidwarren]

Yes Word 2008 for Mac is awful, a real pain and almost unusable. I hate it now and desperate to find soemthing else. I am thinking I will move to iWork. I wish I understood why it was so bad though. It also takes nearly 1 minute to save a new file. Exasperating! Perhaps someone can explain it to me.

Yeah, I actually have found it's performance worse now that it has been updated a few times.

 

[dimme]

I had office 2008 on my MBP 2.4. At first it was dead slow, then after a few reinstalls it seemed alittle faster. Now 2 months later it is unusable. So I dumped it and now it back to word 2004.

 

[coupdetat]

Yeah... Office 2008 is kind of a dog. Try opening some large Excel files with it, that is a truly painful experience! In comparison, 2004 under Rosetta is much better but still gets smoked by a P3 running Office 2003

I would start some conspiracy theory about MS crippling the OSX versions, but Numbers is even worse. Not sure why we Mac users get shafted when it comes to productivity software, but at least we have Pages and KeyNote which are top notch.

 

[dimme]

I looked at iWork and the one problem I have with the package is the file format. Try to upload a numbers doc to box.net and it turnes into so odd package file. Doc & XLS have become "standards" and with those formats I feel I can open those documents for years to come. Weather it is with MS office or a open office alternative. Also the fact that pages does nor password protect files is a deal breaker.

 

[jackiecanev2]

I had the same problem with office for the longest time, and then I updated to the latest release (2 or 3 releases had occurred since my initial install) and now it is MUCH faster, launches to a new document in less than 3 seconds on both my MBA and my MBP.

 

[kaku945]

works perfect for me... though crashed twice in 2 months... but i bet it would have crashed more frequently in other operating systems...

 

[boonchunt]

can go for iwork alrd.....

 

[holden57]

I seem to have a problem with a typing lag, and with slow start-up times (although not as bad as many people here are reporting).

 

[benthewraith]

Upon updating to Snow Leopard I have noticed Word 2008's speed has improved. However I did not install it the conventional way. I installed Word 2008 via Time Machine, and it seems to have improved. I've noticed that the fonts Microsoft Office typically includes in Font Book aren't there, meaning I can't use Cambria/Calibri in Pages (which I make my default font as I'm not big on Helvetica). However, the speed in Word seems to be a lot faster. There is no typing lag at all other than the first keystroke when opening up Word or if I cmd-tab out and come back. It then returns to normal.

 

[antonioanmar]

Office is very slow in all the Mac computers, because the Mac version is not well optimized.
I have been using it in my MBA, also in my Unibody Aluminium MacBook (with 4 Gb of RAM) and also on my office iMac, and in all of them it is slower than iWork.
Now, i always use iWork. For my own use i use it, when i receive some documents from other people i open them with iWork, and when i need to send any document to somebody i save it like Office (Excel or Word).
I have the configuration to open all the Excel and Word files directly with Numbers and Pages

 

[MultiFinder17]

I've been using iWork for years - it's fast, cheaper than Office, and many of the features that its apps offer are really quite nice.

"A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard"

 

[gordon.freeman]

Turn off "Show all nonprinting characters"

This helped me very much:

- Turn off the "Show all nonprinting characters" (on the standard toolbar).

Word 2008 was very slow whenever I used "scroll" on the pages. After turning that thing off, it speedup up.