Many thanks Dawn for the comments and (particularly) the helpful link
to the further detailed suggestions.

I'll work my way through the various options and report back for the
benefit of anyone else that has this problem in the future.

As you anticipated as a possibility, splitting the main big table
(which accounts for about 300 pages out the 1,500 total) is not an
acceptable option. I want users to be able to sort the entries into
whatever order suits their research purpose.

My first impression using the option of working in Normal mode using
the "draft Font" is that this certainly speeds things up considerably,
but at the cost of the document not looking the same as it will when
printed (particularly in relation to the endnotes etc). However, it
looks like this is the best option to reduce my irritation with working
on this document...

Thanks again for the helpful comments,

Isaac

Dawn Crosier wrote:
Word does have trouble building very large tables. One thing that you
can do is to split your tables into smaller tables. Therefore, Word
will not have to *build* the long columns of information. If that is
not an acceptable alternative, then you can change the font
temporarily to Draft Font to speed it up. You need to be in Normal
view then select Tools, Options from the menu, choose the View tab and
check the Draft font box.

This page describes more options which will enable you to improve
performance: http://word.mvps.org/faqs/tblsfldsfms/FastTables.htm

Dawn Crosier
Microsoft MVP
"Education Lasts a Lifetime"

Hi,

I'm being driven slowly insane by the "Word is repaginating" message
appearing whilst I work on a Word document which is now around 1,500
long (all text, in tables) and would be very grateful for any help.
snip