[Carole Sigouin, Sr. Technical Writer]

I was wondering if you had a solution to this problem. When I open this
135-page document designed as a Glossary, it spools for many seconds while
analyzing the document. It contains only two large tables. We tried to see
what was the cause of this but, couldn't find any junk imported into the
document. I converted it as a Tab Delimeter file but it is difficult to read
now, so I'd rather maintain my table grid. Would you have any suggestions?

[Cindy M.]

Hi Carole,

I was wondering if you had a solution to this problem. When I open this
135-page document designed as a Glossary, it spools for many seconds while
analyzing the document. It contains only two large tables. We tried to see
what was the cause of this but, couldn't find any junk imported into the
document. I converted it as a Tab Delimeter file but it is difficult to read
now, so I'd rather maintain my table grid. Would you have any suggestions?

Since Word 97, with each new version of Word, new capabilities have been added
to the Table feature. For example, in 2000 column widths could adjust
automatically to cell content, as tables do in web browsers. Each of these new
features has added overhead to Word's calculation of the table and page layout,
which explains why you're seeing the delay. The longer the table, the longer
the time required for the calculation.

If your table/document is being generated by a program, I would recommend that
the program set the DefaultTable parameter of the Tables.Add method to use the
word 97 type of table. That would lock out most of the overhead (such as the
automatic column-width adjustment).

If the document has been generated manually, about all you can do is select the
table, then set the column width property (in the Table/Properties/Columns tab)
to an "exact" setting for each column. That won't be quite as efficient as the
programmatic approach, but it should help.

Another thing that can help would be to break the large tables up into multiple
smaller ones. Unfortunately, this does mean a paragraph is required between
each table, but you could format the text size and line height to a very small
value (.5 pt is the minimum, I think - it's not listed in the dropdowns, but
you can type it into the boxes directly).

Or, perhaps you could use Excel rather than Word?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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