Word 2000 size limit under WIN98SE? 1

[lardyboy]

I have a 16MB word document, 650 pages long. It works ok in print layout mode, but refuses to do a print preview at all, ever. I have left it for 15 minutes and it is still thinking about it. My laptop running XP home does the print preview in about 1 minute.

According to Word 2000 help it should be able to handle a 32MB document. Is there a lower limit imposed by WIN98SE?

I doubled(+) my RAM from 128MB to 300MB and it still fails to print preview. Hard disk access is minimal, RAM is still available but CPU usage (450MHz Pentium) is flat out for ever.

 

[cdogg]

The size of the document shouldn't be a factor.

1) Are you able to print preview ANY document in Win98SE?

2) Does your WinXP laptop have the same version of Office?

3) Under which version of Office was this document created (and if you say 2000, then was it created on this PC under Win98)?

4) Does the Win98 PC have the same printer connected as the WinXP laptop, and is it set as the default on both?


If you are able to preview other documents that you've created on this PC, try to resave this document (maybe only part of it) to a new document. See if that makes a difference.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[lardyboy]

1) Are you able to print preview ANY document in Win98SE?
Yes of course.

2) Does your WinXP laptop have the same version of Office?
Yes.

3) Under which version of Office was this document created (and if you say 2000, then was it created on this PC under Win98)?
It was originaly created under Win95 but it has been through so many revisions of master document, split documents, linked images and so forth that I have probably done a cut and paste of the whole document into Word 2000 more than once.

4) Does the Win98 PC have the same printer connected as the WinXP laptop, and is it set as the default on both?
Yes I think it is the same printer but I could check that.

In the meantime I just got sick of the wretched Win98SE machine as being too slow on this job. I just bought an AMD 64 4200 X2. That does the print preview seriously fast, making the laptop look like a sluggard!

Thanks for your interest.

 

[cdogg]

It was originaly created under Win95 but it has been through so many revisions of master document...

I kind of expected it had. This is where things can get a bit tricky. At the end of your 650-page document, there is a section of hidden code that has tracked each revision/save, conversion, link, etc. Especially in older versions of Office, this code quickly becomes unstable and can often corrupt a large document over time.

Now I noticed you said that you've done a cut & paste several times into a new document, but there is a particular procedure that has to be followed so that you don't also cut & paste the hidden code:

1) Open the document and hit CTRL-END at the same time (This will take you to the end of the typed text, but before the hidden code)
2) Then you want to hit CTRL-SHIFT-HOME which will select all the text in the document
3) Just use copy, open a new document and paste it in there. Make sure you are saving the document locally on the C: drive for best performance.

Don't forget that a good alternative test is to select just a couple pages and paste it into a new Word 2000 document. See if you can preview that.

Yes I think it is the same printer but I could check that.

Please do. It makes a difference sometimes, because Word relies on the installed print driver that is selected as the default. If your laptop has a different printer or if your Win98 PC has a bad print driver installed, either can explain why print preview is behaving differently. Of course, the driver under WinXP is going to be more efficient, but it's still a good idea to check that the Win98 PC has the right one installed.


If you are able to print preview smaller Word documents just fine, then like you said, it's probably just a case of having OLD, much slower hardware!

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[lardyboy]

Thanks for that copy tip.

I tried it under Word 2003 and the file size reduced by tens of kB. Obviously it was doing something.

Having cleaned it in 2003 and then taken it back to Word 2000 the print preview would then work. I'm not now going back to Word 2003, but if I were going to I think another copy and paste, but in the Word 2000 version, might help it some more in terms of compatibility. (I couldn't do the copy originally in Word 2000 under WIN98SE, the program just hung).

 

[cdogg]

Awesome. I'm thinking the hidden code documenting all the revisions was causing it to hang in a loop. By taking that out (which you could see by the number of KB going down), your Win98 PC had a lot less code to sift through.

Congrats...

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884