Microsoft Word runs very slow on my Mac

I am having the same problem. Have to work my PhD thesis - urgent! The Word doc is freezing and getting stuck every 30 mins. I close down the Word and restart the computer. but it happens again. This is crazy. Please kindly find a solution soon.

How did you go back to the previous version?

I have been having the same problem with Word v 16.85 on my MacBook Pro, running the current version of Sonoma. The program slows down to the point that it is unuseable. When I go to exit the program, it hangs (pinwheel of death), which means that I have to force quit. Then I start it again, and get reasonable peformance for about 30 mins, and then slow down, hang, and force quit.

I followed the suggestion from above and I downgraded to Word v 16.84. but the problem remained the same. I then moved my Word document to the web version of Microsoft 365 and found that MS Word worked without any problem. This is my suggestion for a work around.

Same. If I quit word and reopen, it will be normal for one hour or so but then it gets slow again...

The issue was dealt with yesterday when Microsoft released Word 16.85.2.

This is a thread I have been following about the issue of MS Word consuming too much memory: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/word-is-laggin-on-my-mac/a520fea1-564f-4118-b73b-ada1d8a0e9ef [you can read my comments there too]

It looks like MS is already aware of the reported issue and is working on it.

Cheers,

LM

Same problem: slow, gets stuck open, but all other apps work normally. Haven't found a solution yet...

I was thrilled to find this thread… I have been pulling my hair out trying to figure out why my brand new Mac air 15 was totally freezing up word after what seemed like an hour.

In fact, I called Apple support several times and reinstalled word and reinstalled the operating system.

Finally since the laptop was brand new I just brought it back to the Apple Store and got a new one.

it turns out while I was there one of the Genius Bar folks came by. I had some extra time so I re-created the issue… He was stumped… So as I mentioned, I ended up returning my new Macair book for a replacement

I am also experiencing this problem, so hope there will be a fix soon. But at least it is a well know problem, and not a singular one

I noticed that copy/paste is taking up too much memory in my MS Word, causing me to quit and restart from time to time. It really affects my productivity, but I don't think this is an Apple issue. We should report this to Microsoft, as this is only happening in Microsoft applications.

I upgraded to Sonoma 14.5 (23F79) today. There seemed to be some improvement, but it still goes into a frustrating lag.

I was super frustrated forever like everyone since my Mac slowed to a crawl or worse on Word only this last two weeks, however by following the process of deleting Version 16.85, and the subsequent reinstall of Version 16.84, it works perfectly again.

If you can find the Microsoft link in this thread or anywhere else, just delete and reinstall Version 16.84.

They told me to delete every office application but that was unnecessary. I deleted the word application only, then reinstalled. Now full disclosure, I have not updated to Sonoma, and am using the most up-to date Ventura (Ventura 13.6.7), so maybe that is an issue for some after the reinstall.

If you get it to work, once you reinstall 16.84, don't forget to take off auto updates when prompted (Version 16.85 update is the issue. Don't let it update to it until they fixed the bugs!!!!).

I hope this works for everyone else. Good luck out there. I hope you hit all your deadlines.

The problem of Word getting very slow just appeared today when I was working on a document on my macbook air with Monterey. I then came home and tried editing the same document on my Sonoma iMac 2022, same thing. Got slow very quickly. This is driving me crazy. Please help someone.

TJM814 wrote:

I did download it and installed it and it does not work 16.86 was not successful

There is no 16.86