[John Ilott]

I am operating Word 2003 on a relatively new PC with 512 Mb of memory. I am
working on a thesis that is approximately 30,000 words long, but due to the
tables in the document, the file is 65 Mb.

In most cases, the file is fairly easy to manage, but as soon as I try to
format in any way, Word freezes (that dreaded hourglass hangs on the screen)
and tells me that Word is not responding. Then I have to Ctrl+Alt+Del and
restart Word.

The formatting I refer to includes indents, bullets or numbering, changing
normal font to bold, changing the colour of a cell in a table and so on.

I have thought of splitting the document into smaller sections, but I have
so many cross references and endnotes, I'm not game to try this.

Am I doing something wrong? Is Word incapable of handling a file this
large? Is there something I can do to improve performance?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give.