Word Doesn't Like Really Big Documents

Is there a similar word processor that does? I'm working with a 98 MB file that is 120 pages long and has hundreds of photos. Word 2007 won't open it, yet strangely enough Microsoft Works 8.5 will (though it does occasionally crash after editing it for 30-60 minutes). The obvious solution is to work with several smaller files. But it seems like Word should be able to handle this size file - I have plenty of RAM leftover at this point. So why is this document suffocating Word?

P.S. It's not just that it takes awhile to load off the hard drive - that is noticeable in Works, but it does at least eventually load it.

edit: Just tried to paste 40 MB of it into another document and got an error that the information selected exceeded the maximum paste size for the Word Processor (Works 8.5). Why such low limits when you have tons of RAM?

 

Try OpenOffice (its free), but I don’t know whether it’ll be any better at handling very large files.

 

I assume you are doing this on the notebook shown in your signature?

In any event, I used to work with very large documents in a previous job and sometimes it would take quite some time opening them due to to pictures linked to other sources (embedded objects). Are your pictures "dead" or are they linked to other documents/apps?

 

LaTeX would handle this just fine...

Assuming it was a .tex document rather than a Word one, so in your case, that's probably not very useful.

 

Me neither but it's worth a shot. Especially because it's free.

 

Huge documents work for me using Office 2007 under XP & Vista. OpenOffice does load them quicker tho.

 

Good to hear. About OO being faster that is.

 

Funny how open office is catching on.

Got a free legal version of Office 2007 and I dont even touch it since I dl'd Openoffice...

 

My OpenOffice problem is that it looks too much like MS Works.

D:

I tried, but I went back to '03, and now trying '07 for the second time since I had a legit copy lying around [Previously I had just used the trial]

 

I'll look into Open Office and see if it handles the files better. The pictures are put in using the "Insert Picture From File" command, and the laptop is the one in my sig. Once I cut the size to about 40 MB, things start running smoothly again.

 

With OO, or Word?

 

Have you tried saving it as an earlier version of Word? Sometimes that helps with file size issues. If you can save it as an earlier version, open it and split it into multiple documents. File size limits are built into Office programs, but not sure what the limit is for Word 2007. Open Office claims to be able to handle larger files so that might work with at least opening it.

One thing that might help is to turn off the Fast Save option in Word. Inserting pictures, as you're doing, helps keep file size down, too. Cutting/pasting pictures creates bigger files. Also, don't allow versions to save. Save them as separate docs.

There's also the possibility that a file that large has become corrupted. There are a couple of things you can try to fix it, if it is corrupt. A web search of something like "corrupt word document" will give you some options.

 

I've been working on a couple of Office documents all day today, a few Word documents which are all over 90MB large, and an Excel spreadsheet about 70MB large, and they've been open all day and I've had no problems.

I use a copy of Office 2007 Professional Plus I picked up from school for much cheaper than the retail price.