As a writer, I virtually live inside Microsoft Word, creating and editing up to 20 documents a day. But it is so slow that barely a week goes by without me getting so annoyed that I seriously start to consider uninstalling Office 2003 and going with Open Office instead. Why? Quite simply because Word has the potential to slow down to a snail’s pace and take its sweet time opening up.

So for the past few weeks, I have been scouring the Information Super Highway looking for tips on how to speed Word up. Here’s what I’ve found so far and they seem to be having a positive effect so far.

After going to Tools then Options, do the following :

1. On the View tab, uncheck the ‘Animated text’ box.

2. If you use Word in Normal view, check ‘Wrap to window’.

3. On the General tab, uncheck ‘Provide feedback with animation’.

4. If you work with many documents, push the “˜Recently used file list’ entries to 9 (the highest setting). Or down to 0 if you want to disable the Recently Used File List.

5. If you use simple Auto -Shapes, uncheck ‘Automatically create drawing canvas when inserting Auto Shapes’.

6. On the Spelling & Grammar tab, uncheck ‘Check grammar as you type’ and ‘Check grammar with spelling’. If your spelling is good, consider also unchecking ‘Check spelling as you type’.

7. On the Print tab, turn off ‘Background printing’. Most printers these days are so good that the background printing option is not really that useful.

8. Now come out of the Options box and go to ‘Tools and Auto Correct’ Options. There is a tab called ‘AutoFormat As YouType’. Uncheck all the boxes under “˜Apply as you type’ and “˜Automatically as you type’.

Can you think of anymore ways to make Word speed up?

Mark O’Neill is a freelance writer, proofreader, and blogger. Check out his blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

Tagged: How-To Articles • Microsoft • microsoft office • microsoft word • optimize • speedup