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voth · Jun 16, 2008, 02:45 PM

Has anyone noticed Office taking up an insane amount of actual and/or virtual memory?

On a specific occasion I had Word (a single multi-page document - I believe it was approx. 9-11 pages) open and noticed that in activity monitor Word was taking up 182 M of real memory.

Could it be something as simple as Office 2008 is specifically designed for Intel based system while I am running Office 2008 on a Gen A Power Mac (Dual 2.0Ghz)?

Sherman Homan · Jun 16, 2008, 03:23 PM

Your mileage may vary, but Office 2008 on a PowerPC chipped Mac is just plain miserable. Some people have reported better luck if they install it without Entourage.

voth · Jun 16, 2008, 03:46 PM

I'll check on a MBP to see if I get the same kind of results.

Koralatov · Jun 17, 2008, 11:12 AM

Originally Posted by voth

On a specific occasion I had Word (a single multi-page document - I believe it was approx. 9-11 pages) open and noticed that in activity monitor Word was taking up 182 M of real memory.

I’m running Word on a MBP (specs in sig), editing a 40-page document which is all text with no images, tables, or anything particularly fancy in it, and real memory usage is ~175MB. I also used Excel a couple of weeks ago, and it ran like a dog too. Overall, I think it’s probably that Office is just really badly optimised.

mduell · Jun 17, 2008, 01:12 PM

Have you installed the latest update?

If you have multiple Office apps open, how much of the memory usage is private vs shared?

Koralatov · Jun 17, 2008, 05:27 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

Have you installed the latest update?

I ran the updater prior to testing the document mentioned in my previous reply, and it was totally up-to-date, so I don’t think that’s the problem here.

besson3c · Jun 17, 2008, 05:36 PM

It's amazing that these sorts of problems are so common for an f-ing word processor.

Koralatov · Jun 18, 2008, 07:01 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

It's amazing that these sorts of problems are so common for an f-ing word processor.

Tell me about it. It’s so bad that I’ve started using TextEdit instead…

another.creationmyth · Jun 20, 2008, 03:55 PM

Originally Posted by Sherman Homan

Your mileage may vary, but Office 2008 on a PowerPC chipped Mac is just plain miserable. Some people have reported better luck if they install it without Entourage.

That's interesting because I've noticed a serious memory suck as well

Maybe I need to trash entourage, since I don't use the damn thing anyway

Koralatov · Jun 25, 2008, 04:00 PM

Originally Posted by another.creationmyth

Maybe I need to trash entourage, since I don't use the damn thing anyway

Well, I have only Excel and Word installed, and it’s still a dog. I haven’t installed the latest update yet but, being brutally honest, I don’t imagine it will make much difference…

sdennie · Jul 8, 2008, 10:22 AM

I, too, am frustrated by Word 2008's slowness. Computers get faster, but each version of Word is slower than the previous one. I don't get it.

I use TextEdit a lot, in place of Word. If Word wasn't a standard, I'd switch to something else entirely. If things don't improve, I may do that anyway.

Example: If I compose a few paragraphs, then copy them to paste into an email or something else, my computer stops while it's processing that task. I typically wait at least 15 second just to put a couple paragraphs onto the clipboard. Ridiculous. So I use TextEdit instead.

besson3c · Jul 8, 2008, 10:32 AM

Now that Office is using its XML format, in theory this should be easier for other apps to support. Is this the case? Has anybody run into difficulties with Neo/OpenOffice handling Office XML docs?

mduell · Jul 8, 2008, 08:00 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Now that Office is using its XML format, in theory this should be easier for other apps to support. Is this the case? Has anybody run into difficulties with Neo/OpenOffice handling Office XML docs?

Have you seen the Office 2007/2008 XML spec? It's huge and unimplementable. And incompatible with the equally poor 6000 page Office OpenXML spec MS just shoved through ISO.

pcryan5 · Jul 9, 2008, 07:39 PM

FWIW - Office 2007 (Windows) uses 9 times the memory compared to Office 2003.

idykenano · Jul 9, 2008, 10:15 PM

Adding any pictures or graphs to a word document will kill a computer. When writing a 30 page lab report with 7 pages of that being graphs it makes my macbook cry (fairly new, specs in sig).

awaspaas · Jul 10, 2008, 11:23 PM

Using Office 07 in Parallels has been a better experience than using Office 08 on the Mac. But I don't really have much choice, since Office 08 doesn't support any extensions, add-ins, or inserted equations from Windows 07. Eych.

chabig · Jul 11, 2008, 05:28 AM

Just a comment on the original post. 182MB is not a lot of RAM these days.

Koralatov · Jul 11, 2008, 05:05 PM

Originally Posted by chabig

Just a comment on the original post. 182MB is not a lot of RAM these days.

Quite true, but that doesn’t account for quite how dire the performance of the Office suite—it really, really shouldn’t be as slow as it is.

chabig · Jul 11, 2008, 05:08 PM

Originally Posted by Koralatov

Quite true, but that doesn’t account for quite how dire the performance of the Office suite—it really, really shouldn’t be as slow as it is.

I agree wholeheartedly. It's dog slow on my 2.2GHz MacBook. Microsoft programming quality is disgraceful!