Why is Word for Mac slow with large documents?

Depending upon the unmentioned Mac model and configuration, or the presence of other opened applications, most any word processing application might be slow attempting to handle 1700+ pages. More so, if that tome is on a network drive where access times are variable, that may create the impression that Word is slow.

The End key on a Mac extended keyboard does what it is supposed to do — jump to the end of a document. Pages has keyboard shortcuts for document navigation: Keyboard shortcuts for Pages on Mac - Apple Support where you will find that the section Move around within a document offers cmd+right-arrow to jump to the end of the current line.

And by comparison, the 1942 version of War and Peace comes to 1352 pages. Tom Clancy's Cardinal of the Kremlin is 816 pages.

I’d also look at Literature and Latte’s Scrivener, or at an alternative.

I’ve found that multiple smaller documents (sections, chapters, whatever) work better for my books, and that Microsoft Office just isn’t good at any of this. (But in all fairness, big documents don’t work all that well in many WYSIWYG word-processing tools, either.)

Separate from the mechanics of editing large files, Scrivener helps me keep the details sorted.

Toolbox41 wrote:

When I tried Pages, every time I hit the "end" key, it took me to the last page of the document instead of sending the cursor to the end of the line I was working on.

Keyboard shortcuts for Pages on Mac - Apple Support

You are welcome. I use Apple keyboards so I know that keyboard shortcuts documented by Apple work as expected… though there are some differences between built-in keyboards and external keyboards for certain features.