I am editing large documents (400 pgs) that have been edited (and tracked) by several editors (most on PC, me on Mac) the application will just freeze (not respond) with a spinning ball.
I've used Word to write a few books, and it requires some tricks to keep it stable.
Word has always been known for instability when you try to get it to work with huge documents.
Try this:
- Break your document up into chunks (separate files), each with under 100 pages. A natural thing to do, if you are working with a book, is to break the book up into separate files for each chapter.
- Turn off unnecessary background tasks in Word. e.g. Grammar checking, page count, etc. These things take up RAM and processor time, and can just as easily be run after you are done with the document.
- Sometimes Word has a problem with the display
of graphics (including equations). It is best to insert and display graphics *last* in the process of creating your document.
- Word is notorious for memory leaks. You can manage this by occasionally
opening a new blank document, and then closing it again without making
any changes; that procedure triggers a routine that frees
up unreleased memory, and gives Word more room to work.
- A new version of Microsoft Office comes with a bunch of new fonts.
These new fonts can conflict with older Apple and Microsoft fonts and cause instability.
This Web page tells you how to deal with this problem for Office 2011:
http://www.officeformachelp.com/office/font-management/
I hope that this helps.