Word for Mac 2011 Freezes & Recovery file often corrupt

I Have a three month old 27" iMac (2.8 gHz Intel Core i5, 4gb) running OS-X 10.6.8. I am using Microsoft Word for Mac 2011 v 14.1.2. Frequently (several times per week) when 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. Sometimes when this happens the auto recovery file is corrupted, i.e. can't be opened by Word (or Pages). I'm so frustrated that I now have my auto-backup set to every 3 minutes.

I moved your post to a separate thread rather than leave it as a tag on to an old post. You should receive more replies this way.

How much system memory do you have? Also, it may help (for safety sake) to select "Always Make a Backup" from the Word 2011 preference panel. That way as soon as you edit the document it will make a backup first. That's in case the auto recovery feature doesn't work.

Also, be sure you have the latest update installed from MS. I believe it's SP-1 for Office 2011.

Thanks for reposting my question

Thanks for posting my question on a new thread. My imac has 4 gB of memory.

Bill:

The 4 GB of system memory should be enough. What else is going on when you're editing that document? The next time you edit it, open up your Activity Monitor app which is located in Utilities and see if there is anything else that's using a lot of system memory.

What may be happening is that your hitting swap space during the edit and on occasion will freeze Word if there's not enough memory available. I like MS Office but it's a bit of a resource hog especially when editing very large documents or Powerpoint presentations.

bmagargal said:

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.

Click to expand...

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.