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Why is Pages so slow in my large documents--200 pages?

I'm an editor, so most of the documents I work on are 200-400 pages long, all text. Pages runs so slowly, I'm often pausing while the delete key catches up. I've seen other questions that blame the problem on graphics or tables, but these documents are strictly text.


I did just update to the new operating system, but it was running slowly before that. And I've downloaded the update for Pages.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Nov 14, 2015 5:07 AM

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14 replies

Feb 13, 2016 7:04 AM in response to lexi_patchen

I am having similar issues with documents of similar sizes, on a quite fast machine (see below). I have found that using a large number of comments (I am having 350+ in one document, e.g.) significantly slows it down further, and it seems to me to have to do with Pages auto-updating at which page comments are found. It also seems to me, but I might be wrong here, that showing the right-hand comments-panel makes things worse, while hiding it makes it better. Also turning on and using "track changes" makes it almost impossible to work with documents of several hundred pages.


The auto-updating, smart, behavior of Pages is oftentimes really good, and I find it dreadful to work with other applications not behaving this intelligently at the few times when I am forced to do so, but I think that it would be good if Pages could determine its auto-update rates based on the size of the document and time it takes to perform these background updates, if this is what makes it so slow. Because I would rather keep the flow than always have correct page-numbers in the table of contents and comments bubbles.


iMac(14,2), Intel Core i7, OSX 10.11.3, Pages 5.6.1.


To the team behind Pages, thanx for a (mostly) great application!

Feb 13, 2016 12:48 PM in response to lexi_patchen

You did not specify which version of Pages but from the problem I assume you are using Pages 5.x.


Pages 5 is noticeably slower than Pages '09 and I suspect, given all the bugs and UI issues it is the coding.


Apple has not put the time and thought into fixing it and given that it is now almost 2 and half years old, not sure they ever will. The price of a "free" application is the lack of effort and time put into it, leaving you to waste a lot of yours.


It is what it is, all you can do is look for what may be causing it to recalculate all the time.


That and look for something more appropriate to work with. If I am creating a pure text document I do not use Pages, for a start I value my work and there are far more compatible and productive word/text processors. Bean, iText Express and LibreOffice are all free and good. For pure text I like AI Writer, but there are many choices, don't just pick up the first one Apple offers you.


Peter

Feb 24, 2016 2:54 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

Free application? I don't know about the rest of you, but I paid for Pages in 2012 when I bought my MacBook Pro. I bought both Pages and Numbers separately (I didn't need Keynote at the time, and still don't). Pages actually used to be a robust little program. The new edition that they released after the '09 version is completely different. They got rid of some valuable features. It's certainly not our fault that we purchased a program that Apple overhauled with poor code.


Lexi—I'm having the same problem. I'm an author, so I'm working with documents on the larger side, too. It's happening when I get docs back from my editor with comments and track changes on, and always when the doc is 1 MB or larger. Not that I think a megabyte is all that big, but I digress. Were you ever able to figure this out?

May 6, 2016 4:04 AM in response to elizabethbarone

My experience is very similar to all of the above comments. I'm using the latest version of Pages (5.6.1) on a Macbook Air running El Capitain 10.11.4 and Pages is agonisingly slow to work with.


I am editing a pure text file of about 100,000 words. I am using the 'track changes' function so that I can work with my editor and there are currently over 3,000 changes/comments. When I try to edit, there is an almost constant spinning ball and it takes maybe 30 seconds or more to make even the smallest change.


I tried scrivenver, openoffice, libreoffice and google docs, but none of those could mirror my editor's changes and comments well enough, or at all.


The solution I eventually found was to use an old Mac I had with Pages '09 installed. I'm not sure if Pages '09 would work on the newer Macs, but it is quick and can handle this large document and the thousands of changes and comments with no problem, zero lag and no spinning ball.

May 6, 2016 8:41 AM in response to Graham Holliday

Peter has made his point about Pages v5. It is not based on Pages '09 v4.3, and represents the user requirement antithesis for a modern word processing application.


The only way that you can work in the same native Word document format as received by your editor, or faithful edits resent by you — is to use MS Word on the Mac. Every word processing solution that you mentioned, and Pages, perform translation on your editor's original Word document when opening it, and when exporting it. The devil resides in translation, and so does lost productivity, and slow application performance.


Writing (and editing) should be a productive, fluid process without profanity. 😉

May 6, 2016 9:09 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks. I wrote a book using Pages '09, before Pages v.5 came out, and my editor used MS Word to edit it with me. We both input thousands of changes/comments in the tracking tool, and speed and spinning balls were never a problem. And, to be honest, the only 'translation' problems we noticed sharing work between Pages '09 and MS Word were; the occasional appearance of a deleted or added space, some missing commas or apostrophes and a few missing paragraph breaks, but certainly nothing that made working between the two applications unworkable or even mildly annoying. That said, I agree with you, installing MS Office/Word for Mac would appear to be the best way to save sanity and time 🙂

May 12, 2016 8:32 AM in response to Graham Holliday

If you have the retail iWork '09 DVD, you can install it on OS X 10.11.4, but you must follow that install with the Apple iWork 9.3 updater. The installation location of the iWork '09 DVD will be in Applications : iWork '09 folder. Double-clicking any Pages document icon will still open it in Pages v5.6.2. You will need to use the right-click open with menu item and select Pages (4.3) to open Pages '09 documents.


Several of us have Pages '09 v4.3 installed and in use on OS X 10.11.4.

May 12, 2016 9:35 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks. I did read about that option and I do have the disk, however my Macbook Air does not have a DVD player and I must have deleted the old install of iWork at some point to clear space. I'm sure many people are in the same situation. Not so bad for me, I am able to use Pages '09 on a very old Macbook I still have. I feel bad for others though, especially those who bought iWork in the first place and now find a very important part of it unusable.

Nov 23, 2016 1:06 PM in response to lexi_patchen

Pages 5 and 6 are extremely inefficiently written. Despite having considerably less features than Pages '09 they create bloated, unparseable and slow files once they have even a moderate number of objects in a document.


Comments, Grammar Checking and Sharing only compound an already abysmal performance.


I brought a Mac Pro with a clean (in the Apple Store) fast Thunderbolt RAID and 16Gb of RAM, to a spinning beachball of death just by building up an array of a few hundred circular blank shapes. Something that Pages 09 happily cruises through on my old iMac.


So basically it is what it (unfortunately) is.


It is also risky. You are taking the chance of not being able to open or recover your file at some point.


If your work is valuable I highly recommend using more serviceable software, not by Apple as it constantly changes the file format and restricts the OS that the software can run on. On the face of it, the warning signs are painfully clear.


LibreOffice [free] or Microsoft Office at least have compatible and recoverable file formats.


Peter

Nov 23, 2016 2:41 PM in response to PierreBordeaux

There are far worse problems in Pages 5 or 6, than hyphenation, which always sucked anyway, so the choice is still clear cut.


The hyphenation is the useless American style that doesn't keep syllables together ie Therapist becomes The-rapist instead of Thera-pist.


You will be waiting quite a while for Affinity Publisher, they are well behind and seem to be concentrating more on porting Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo to Windows where Serif's customers are.


Peter

Why is Pages so slow in my large documents--200 pages?

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