frequent spinning wheel in MS Word

[cher.stue@gmail]

New MAC Pro. OS X 10.9. app - MS Word for MAC. Spinning wheel every few minutes, all morning, while attempting to edit 20 pp doc. After researching problem: Checked activity utility, no apparent problems, except Word not responding. Plenty of disk space, memory, etc. Closed all other apps (except Webroot). Using only styles to format. Before today, performance seemed to be getting sluggish. My first Apple computer. Blech! It's touchy and difficult, plus I don't know my way around very well. I only changed to MAC because I couldn't tolerate Win 8 -- what have I done?? More important, what can I do to fix this? What do I need to know to prevent it happening again?

 

[harryb2448]

G'day and welcome to the forums.

What verion of Office are you actually running, do you mean a Mac Pro or a MacBook Pro and what do you call 'plenty' of memory? Did you use Migration Assistant to move Office over as often it does not work well being a large suite? The current version is 14.4.8 for Office 2011.

If problems persist and you are using Office 201, remove strictly following these instructions and re-install and keep the activation code handy. Uninstall is a lengthy process and do not simply drag to th Trash as that complicates everything further:-


http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2398768

 

[MacInWin]

Welcome to the forums.

Don't take this first part wrong, I'm jus trying to help you communicate here better. We do take terminology seriously since we're trying to fix problems we cannot see.

First, it's a Mac, not a MAC. And it's probably not a Mac Pro, but a MacBook Pro. The Mac Pro is very pricey and not an entry machine. And if it has OS X 10.9, it probably wasn't new, either, as that version was replaced with OS X 10.10 some time ago.

So, before we proceed, exactly what is it? You can find out by clicking on the Apple logo and About This Mac will tell you what Mac it is and what the version of the OS is. It will also tell you how much memory you have ("Plenty" is not the right answer). As a suggestion, once you know the specs, put them in your profile and they will show up under your screen name and you won't have to post it again in the future. And was the spinning wheel multicolored or just blue?

 

[cher.stue@gmail]

Just finished rounding up that info before I got your message, Jake - thanks - and here's what I have. MacBook Pro, 13" mid-2014 model (bought in Dec., "new" to me.) OS X 10.9.5. (Why can't I upgrade to 10.10 then? Do not want Yosemite.) 2.6 GHz. Word 14.4.8 (2010).

From activity monitor (and I only know what about 20% of this means, and then not well) - Phys mem - 8 GB, Used 4.40 GB. Virtual mem - 8 GB, swap used 0 bytes. App mem - 1.81 GB, file cache 1.73 GB. Wired mem 893.9 MB. CPU - 98% idle.

I hope something here is useful. I'm an editor, not a computer geek. My Toshiba was trouble-free for my purposes for eons, until the Windows "improvements." I just want to work. There's no Apple Store nearby, or I would go there for some lessons. Any and all help (and a little empathy) very much appreciated.

 

[cher.stue@gmail]

multicolored wheel, left it for 5 minutes, no go. Used Forced Quit to recover, multiple times, then started saving every minute or so not to lose my work. Ugh.

 

[MacInWin]

Nothing there out of normal, plenty of memory. About all I can suggest is to uninstall and reinstall Office. The spinning beachball is the OS saying it's busy, or waiting for something to complete. If it's only showing up for the Word application, I would suspect some component of MS Office is not performing properly and not getting back to the OS when it is done, if it is, in fact, completing the task.

One other potential area of slowdowns could be that whatever you are doing with the 20 page document is causing Word to write out the document to the HD to preserve the history, and that your HD is getting full, or the scratch space Word may be using is getting fragmented. You didn't mention the size of the HD, or how much space is left on it, but on a relatively new machine unless you loaded it up that shouldn't be a problem. But it's worth a check anyway.

One thing you may want to look at is to get the application Onyx, from here and run it to clean up your system. Get the right version for your system (Mavericks, or 10.9). If you are doing a lot of big file editing, the caches may be getting a bit ragged as well.

OH, and you don't need any antivirus/cleaners/etc, other than Onyx. If you get hit with adware, AdwareMedic will clean it up and AdBlock+ and Ghostery will prevent it in the first place. But there isn't any need for all that add-on stuff that Windows needs.

 

[cher.stue@gmail]

Will try reinstalling word and will look into Onyx - thank you, Harryb2448 & Jake.