Microsoft Word runs very slow on my Mac

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

There's also a forum devoted to Word at

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word-msoffice_unknown-mso_OPMac?sort=LastReplyDate&dir=Desc&tab=All&status=all&mod=&modAge=&advFil=&postedAfter=&postedBefore=&threadType=all&isFilterExpanded=true&page=1

As Word is not an Apple application, you should contact Microsoft, or participate in Microsoft Word for Mac community for additional Word-related advice.

You should not be running any anti-virus, so-called cleaning, or third-party "tuning" software for macOS. This can undermine the operating system and application performance. What I said earlier about potential document delays based on the document location.

I think Apple caused the problem with Sonoma 14.5. it is not the first time it has rolled out iOS upgrades without first testing compatibility to Microsoft products that millions of us use. It seems Apple's strategy is to wait for the software provider to find a fix. Meanwhile, my productivity is down the toilet.

The Auto Update should find it automatically... At least mine did. I've been using the last update for two hours without any spinning wheel or slowness. By this time, it would required to close WORD and restart it.

Update: Using it the last update for +2 hours without excessive memory usage from 16.85. From previous experience, the memory consumption would be higher than 1.5 GB — So far, so good!!

I used MS Word 16.85.2 for 4 hours today without facing any problems - working with two documents with almost 150 pages each (one in Spanish and the other in Portuguese). This was impossible after 30 minutes with the standard 16.85. Where did you download the 16.86 release?

Please provide a screenshot of your About Word... We are recommending the "16.85.2"!

Cheers

If you go to the right of the document name at the top centre, where it says '[doc name] Last Modified' and click on the wee down arrow to the right of this, you can access Browse Version History.

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 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.

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.

Here’s the rest of my message somehow it got cut off…

I made it home and this time only installed word… Prior I had installed the entire Microsoft 365. Suite

I use the computer for about three hours and then the same error started to occur… Although, not quite as bad…

Regardless, I am going to uninstall word… And install the version as this thread has described… Thank you for that tip!

Hi there, I have the problem with MS word too. Nevertheless, the more problematic is screen / application split function and when the top bar show up; when you use with Safari is fatality awful, really tragic. Cut my laptop back (M2max CPU...) every time I am doing it.

I've been having the same exact issue, so I googled it and here I am. i have to force quit it then launch it again and it will work for 30 mins then stop, it becomes very slow, and I can't type one word without it taking forever. It is so annoying. I saw a comment here to reinstall the version 16.84 because of the issue with 16.85 but it's not letting me download the previous version. any tips?

You are not the only one, I am also suffering from this LAG. I checked my WORD CPU consumption, sometimes it rises to over 100%, which lags very badly. Ive tried all possible solution online, such as reinstalling etc.

NOTHING WORKED! :(