Microsoft Word - can someone explain this behaviour?

Platform: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
Microsoft Word 2010 (Office Home & Student)

Perhaps someone can explain this Word 2010 behaviour that I have noticed for quite some time. I create a Word document with a table of contents. Several days later the **first time** I open the document, one of these two strange behaviours are noticed:

(1) When I try to scroll the document, nothing happens for anywhere from 1-5 seconds. After that period the document will scroll normally.

(2) Ctrl-click on a table of contents entry should **immediately** jump to that entry in the document. However when I open the Word document for the first time there can be a delay of 2-8 seconds before Word will jump to that entry. After that period the document will jump to the appropriate entry and further Ctrl-clicks in the table of contents will work properly.

NOTE that if I open then close another Word document prior to opening the Word document with the table of contents, #1 & #2 do not occur. That is, the document works normally.

 

One more observation....

I notice that if I close the Word document that has the table of contents and then re-open the document, the strange behaviour recurs.

 

Sounds like Word is first having to load the modules that perform those functions, possibly because RAM might be a constraint. How much RAM does your computer have?

 

I don't know if this is relevant, but in Excel a spreadsheet tab will load but then be unavailable for roughly the same amount of time you are mentioning. This is even if there aren't any changes to the document. I chalk this up to a somewhat inefficient handling of data by Excel. There isn't anything in the program to detect changes, so the calculate routine runs anyway.

I think it may be a similar situation with hyperlinks in Word documents. Word doesn't load the controls for the table of contents links until you use the document, when they should be loading when the document is opened. Office is weird in ways like this.

I think Earthling is right about modules being loaded into RAM, but I do think Office is clumsy in this way and likely the culprit. The program just doesn't handle controls of any kind very well, honestly.

 

Tell us about your computer. Hardware specs (RAM, CPU, hard drive space, etc)?

Do Word files with no table of contents show similar behavior?

 

Word files without table of contents behave just fine.
Note that I am very diligent about ensuring that all software is kept up to date.

Specs
------
Software: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit SP1,
Software: Microsoft Office Home & Student 2010
CPU: Intel Core i3 370M @ 2.40 GHz
RAM 4 GB, type DDR3
Hard drive: 465GB Seagate ST9500325AS
-- C : 116GB with 31GB free (28%)
-- D : 329GB with 295GB free (90%)