Resolved MS Word hesitates a long time before saving

I've been using MS Word 2007 successfully since, well, 2007, most recently on Windows 8.1 Suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, it started hesitating for up to a minute when I first save a new docx. On the title bar the warning "(not responding)" pops up, and then there's nothing I can do to finish the save except wait. This happens only on the first save; re-saving the file later is instantaneous like it always was.
Grateful for any explanation and/or suggestions on how to fix.

 

Do note that Office 2007 is no longer supported by Microsoft. That's why I finally bit the bullet last year and upgraded to 2016.

You can try running Office Diagnostics: https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...tics-79DA9853-439C-47FE-826D-EF678D3F726E#bm2

 

Thanks, Bill - I ran the diagnostics as you suggested, but they found nothing to object to.

And thanks Steve: no, just regular saving to the main internal hard disk, as I've been doing since 2007 (and indeed even before that). What bugs me is that I'd done nothing in particular before this behaviour started out of the blue: no major software changes, no new work processes, nothing. I am wondering if some recent Windows Update has had this effect on a no longer supported software - has any other reader noticed this behaviour?

 

How to troubleshoot problems that occur when you start or use Word
Have a look through this MS link.

 

Thanks, retiredlearner. That's a lot to work through! I'll make my way through the advice there and report back on whether any step in there solved the problem.

 

Well, that was quite a morning! I went all through the list in the link you provided (and bookmarked it for the future). I discovered one or two minor problems to be cleaned up along the way. But none of the steps resolved the problem I started with. When I got to the end, I thought I was stumped. But then I noticed the very last step referred only to COM addins, and not to any other type. So I started experimenting with the other types and - bingo! - under "Disabled items" I found the Grammarly addin that I don't remember ever having disabled. I re-enabled it and Word is now playing nice again. Many thanks for the tip which has solved something that had been getting on my nerves for weeks now.

 

Wow! That is really interesting. This is the 2nd time in the last couple weeks I heard about Grammarly. I've been using Microsoft Word since DOS days and had never heard of Grammarly before a couple weeks ago. Only a couple weeks ago, the problem ended up being Grammarly causing problems, not resolving them.

For sure no add-in that is disabled should ever result in a slow down. So IMO, you should uninstall Grammarly, run that Diagnostics I linked to above, then reboot. Then, if you want to reinstall Grammarly again, download the latest version from here. Then see if it affects performance when enabled or disabled. You should not be able to tell the difference either way.

FTR, I checked out Grammarly (the free version) and didn't find it particularly useful or superior to Word's integrated grammar and spelling checker. But then, I feel I do have a pretty good grasp of the English language, proper sentence structure (most of the time) and spelling - as long as my fingers are paying attention to what my mind is saying!

So I removed it. But I am a casual writer. I can see how it might be useful to some who do a lot of writing that must be error free - like professional authors, students and for important business documents. It can also be helpful for those who write in English when English is not their native language. For those writers, the rather expensive costs for the pro version might be worth it. For others, I think Word's own tools work fine - at least with Word 2016.

 

I read you, Bill. But make my living by writing and find it pretty helpful. Not so much for the linguistics, where I feel quite confident without outside help, but for my terribly inaccurate typing. But yes, I take your point here: it shouldn't affect performance. I'll try uninstalling and re-installing; maybe the latest version will be cleaner than the version I had, dating back several years.

 

That's the hopes. I note here the program has had several updates hopefully to maintain compatibility with the latest versions of Windows. If nothing else, reinstalling should overwrite something that may have been corrupted.