I’ve been pulling my hair out trying to figure out why I was experiencing so much lag when typing in Word 2013.
Fixes or workarounds for recent issues in Excel for Mac. Excel for Mac crashes and slow performance [FIXED] Scrolling between cells in Excel 2016 for Mac is slow. Jun 04, 2015 Microsoft word is very slow to show what I type I have only used word so far, but when I am typing in a document, the letters appear after such a long delay. I have used previous versions of office on mac and windows (using office 365 now) and there has never been any lag this serious.
Here is the basic symptom:
When I typed something in a Word document – whether it’s a blank document, a document created from a template, or an existing document – I experienced incredible lag. It would take a while for the characters to appear in the document. Sometimes 2-3 seconds, other times as much as 45 seconds or more.
![Word Word](/uploads/1/2/5/1/125103215/849482716.png)
Of course, this happened right in the middle of a huge project with very, very tight deadlines. And, of course, I was already running behind.
My first thought was I had a virus of some sort. So, I did deep scan, and nothing was found. I ran a repair through Control Panel > Programs and that didn’t help. It felt like the CPU was pegged, but it wasn’t… although Word was using more than its fair share of CPU time. I closed all other programs and that didn’t help. I was getting pretty frustrated.
I finally figured out the problem, and it had to do with my video cards. Apparently, Word didn’t like the fact the video cards were trying to handle the graphics. I’ve read up on this a little and have learned that this setting is a little flaky. Here’s where you find it:
1. In Word 2013, go to “File” and “Options”
2. Click on “Advanced” and scroll down to find the “Display” settings.
3. Find the “Disable hardware graphics acceleration” setting.
Here’s where it gets a little hinky. One would think checking this box would be a bad thing as it would slow down your graphics rendering and cause the lag. That very well could be the case. Or, it might be that Word doesn’t like your video card and so this box needs to be checked. Basically, if it’s checked, remove the check from the box. If it’s not checked, then put a check in the box. Either way, it should fix your problem.
In my particular case, I had to disable acceleration, so I put a check in the box.
I hope this helps you out!