Symptom of a "bloated" template ?

[mansky99]

Hi all,
I've just read the Word MVP website FAQs on "bloated templates" in Word
and have a question. Is the following problem a symptom of a "bloated"
template in Word.

On certain new documents, typing slows to a crawl at times. Specifically,
Users type input from the keyboard but nothing appears on the screen in the
ActiveDocument until another key is pressed (usually the space bar or
backspace command keys). Then all the chars that were typed all are displayed
on the screen. The documents themselves are very small -about 20Kb of just
text. No pictures, tables, just some colored fonts and fonts at 22pts. All
pretty much standard stuff. No custom fonts or colors.

The load on the CPU is minimal (80-90% idle from the top command). Other
files are fine. I've not been able to figure out any pattern to which files
will exhibit the problem, nor the sequence of which macros had been just
used.

Background: I have 20 macros all in my Normal template. All are assigned
keyboard shortcuts. I'm running Mac OSX 10.2.8 and Word 10.1.6 and VB6.0 (I
think) on a Powerbook G4. The Normal template is (approximately) 620 Kb,
which I thought was pretty small. I have however, repeatedly modified,
compiled and saved changes to the template over the past 6 months or so. But
I have not gone thru the process of Exportingand then Importing the macros
into a new template, nor re-arranged the macros into Addins and reduce their
"footprint" in Normal.dot.

Is this issue of a delay between input and display of chars in an
ActiveDocument on an otherwise idle machine an example of a "bloated"
template that needs to be cleaned up ?

And if so, how on the Mac platform do I export/import the classes and
modules in Normal.dot into a file? I don't see any Export/Import option in
the VBA IDE on the Mac version of Word.


Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,


Ed

 

[Beth Rosengard]

Hi Ed,

See inline.

Hi all,
I've just read the Word MVP website FAQs on "bloated templates" in Word
and have a question. Is the following problem a symptom of a "bloated"
template in Word.

On certain new documents, typing slows to a crawl at times. Specifically,
Users type input from the keyboard but nothing appears on the screen in the
ActiveDocument until another key is pressed (usually the space bar or
backspace command keys). Then all the chars that were typed all are displayed
on the screen. The documents themselves are very small -about 20Kb of just
text. No pictures, tables, just some colored fonts and fonts at 22pts. All
pretty much standard stuff. No custom fonts or colors.

In this instance you're talking about the documents slowing down, not
templates, right? And only sometimes with some users? I doubt this is a
template problem and I suspect that some users have the preference to "Allow
Fast Saves" turned on. It's an obsolete preference that allows Word to make
"partial" saves, tacking the changed code on to the end of the document
(instead of making a full copy of the document). The more times you save,
the more bloated the document gets and the slower things run.

So first check to see if anyone has "Allow Fast Saves" checked. Have them
uncheck it and tell them to *never* check it again. Then do a Save on each
problem doc so Word is forced to clean out all that code. It's also a good
idea to turn on (also in Word's Save Preferences) the option to "Always Make
Backup". This gives you a backup copy current to the last time you hit
Save.

There are other causes for slowdowns in Word but check this first and post
back if the problem continues.

The load on the CPU is minimal (80-90% idle from the top command). Other
files are fine. I've not been able to figure out any pattern to which files
will exhibit the problem, nor the sequence of which macros had been just
used.

Background: I have 20 macros all in my Normal template. All are assigned
keyboard shortcuts. I'm running Mac OSX 10.2.8 and Word 10.1.6 and VB6.0 (I
think) on a Powerbook G4. The Normal template is (approximately) 620 Kb,
which I thought was pretty small. I have however, repeatedly modified,
compiled and saved changes to the template over the past 6 months or so. But
I have not gone thru the process of Exportingand then Importing the macros
into a new template, nor re-arranged the macros into Addins and reduce their
"footprint" in Normal.dot.

Is this issue of a delay between input and display of chars in an
ActiveDocument on an otherwise idle machine an example of a "bloated"
template that needs to be cleaned up ?

Again, if the delay is in the document and not the template, I don't think
the template is at fault. But getting these macros out of Normal is a good
idea. The Normal template is prone to corruption and the cure for that is
to trash it.

And if so, how on the Mac platform do I export/import the classes and
modules in Normal.dot into a file? I don't see any Export/Import option in
the VBA IDE on the Mac version of Word.

Your best bet is to create a Global template to store your macros and put it
in Word's Startup folder so it is accessible to all documents. To transfer
macros from Normal to another file, use the Organizer (Tools> Templates &
add-ins> Organizer). Instead of giving you all the details here, let me
refer you to a great article:
<http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/GlobalTemplate.htm>

HTH,

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
MacOffice MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
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