Hi.
I'm creating a manual in Word for a program we use at work.
While I am working (40 pages) the formatting gets very complicated and
autosave and autoformating becomes a nightmare, Finally, Word halts for ages
as thought it's either updating or something, though it allows me to
continue on other applications. This can take up to 10 minutes. Just
adding one word or saving would take another 10 minutes. In the meantime,
the size increases constantly, from a normal 10 mb to 116 mb in just 2
minutes.
I know it's to do with formatting as this happens mostly when inserting
number/bullets. Normally the doc automatically adjusts and one can backspace
if necessary. However, in my doc, this causes the whole document to go
crazy, and takes forever, and gets worse by the minute. While this is going
on, I try 'saving as' in another name, but doesn't help. I copy and paste,
which has worked much in the past, as if cleansed from whatever was plaguing
it, but by now the file is complicated, with many images and screen shots.

I have tried splitting the file up in three bits, copied pasted, fixed the
formatting and copied and pasted bit by bit. it worked!! But, then after
a couple of days, adding a little to it here and there, it happens again,
till it finally collapsed. The other day, it auto recovered on 2003 and
something got fixed because it went down to 10,000 kb and worked like a
dream. Two days later (today) I'm just finishing it off at work, small
details, corrections and it starts to happen again, until I couldn't even do
my normal work. Word would just crash, every time I tried to save it.

Any ideas please?
Also how can you repair a damaged file?
Thanks in advance