Microsoft Word doc. grows significantly in size with small text changes.

chemistry_geek

chemistry_geek

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I'm currently finishing my masters thesis, which is in Micro$oft Word format, and have noticed that the document size increases significantly with small changes and additions to text after saves. As far as I know, I do not have "Track Changes" turned on. Within one day, the document size changed from 25MB to 50MB. When I print to PDF the document size is approximately 12.5MB. I am using the first version of Micro$soft Word for Mac OS X with the most recent service pack updates. Does anyone know what could be causing this matter? This is really frustrating to watch my valuable hard drive space disappear into oblivion.
 
Aside from Tracking Changes, what about Fast Saves? I don't have Word for Mac in front of me right now, but if I recall correctly, Fast Saves also increases the file size.
 
yes, turn off 'allow fast saves'. A full save will probably decrease the size of the file (or maintain approximately the same size)
 
DeltaMac said:
yes, turn off 'allow fast saves'. A full save will probably decrease the size of the file (or maintain approximately the same size)
Click to expand...
I used to work for Microsoft, training tech support "engineers," and one of the first things I learned was always turn off fast save. That solves lots of very different problems.
 
Thank you everyone for your suugestions. I'll check the preferences in Word when I get home; right now I'm at work.

After reading your responses I have another question. If 'allow fast saves' is turned on and I turn it off and re-save the document, how do reduce the size of the document to the size it should be, assuming that the problem isn't remedied by disabling 'allow fast saves'?
 
I think doing a "Save As..." to a different file would shrink the file size back down. Turning off "fast save" may keep Word from "fast saving" in the future, but it may not traverse your current document and rid the document of any past "fast save" data.
 
From my experience at Microsoft, I would never let a document file get that big in the first place. Rather, I would break it down into smaller files, or sub-documents, of not more than 10 to 15 pages in length, less if there are lots of graphics and charts, and edit those individually. (Usually there is a logical partitioning you can use such as a chapter or topic for each sub-document.) Then I would use the Master document feature of Word to reassemble the entire document, generate the table of contents, index, and end notes if applicable; normalize any styles that may have become different in various sub-documents; and finally print out the entire document. Given the internal architecture of Word and word documents, that does several good things:
  • The smaller sub-documents are much faster to work with and edit
  • The risk any sub-document becoming corrupted or crashing is greatly reduced
  • The risk of losing the entire document due to corruption or Word error is dramatically reduced.
 
I wish I had an answer for you, but I had a similar experience a few years ago. A two-page Word document, albeit with very small print, was nevertheless less than 100K in size, but then with small alterations, in less than six changes and saves, it began increasing in size until it was a gargantuan 600+ Mega bytes!! The computer would bog down trying to do anything with the document. I tried everything I could think of, including cutting and pasting parts of it at a time onto a new document. I don't think even that worked, for I remember just giving up and retyping the whole thing back into a new document which got the size back down to normal again. I haven't had that problem since. Perhaps it's a quirk (bug) in Word somewhere, that under extremely infrequent, uncommon situations, it just bloats, massively?
 
Word has pretty much always done that. Do
a "save as", and the file size will get down
to a dull roar. As the MS techs say, it's not
a bug, it's a feature.
 
perfessor101 said:
From my experience at Microsoft, I would never let a document file get that big in the first place. Rather, I would break it down into smaller files, or sub-documents, of not more than 10 to 15 pages in length, less if there are lots of graphics and charts, and edit those individually. (Usually there is a logical partitioning you can use such as a chapter or topic for each sub-document.) Then I would use the Master document feature of Word to reassemble the entire document, generate the table of contents, index, and end notes if applicable; normalize any styles that may have become different in various sub-documents; and finally print out the entire document. Given the internal architecture of Word and word documents, that does several good things:
  • The smaller sub-documents are much faster to work with and edit
  • The risk any sub-document becoming corrupted or crashing is greatly reduced
  • The risk of losing the entire document due to corruption or Word error is dramatically reduced.
Click to expand...


Word has the ability to do all THAT without special add-on programs like "Endnote"? If you can spare some time and it's relatively easy to do, could you share how to generate the table of contents and do all the end notes? I've found adjusting the end notes to be a real inconvenience, every endnote is just plain text and have to be changed manually.
 
chemistry_geek said:
Word has the ability to do all THAT without special add-on programs like "Endnote"? If you can spare some time and it's relatively easy to do, could you share how to generate the table of contents and do all the end notes? I've found adjusting the end notes to be a real inconvenience, every endnote is just plain text and have to be changed manually.
Click to expand...
Once you know how, all this is relatively easy, but it is too long to go into here. In Microsoft Word Help, search on "Master Document," "Table of content," and "footnote" (or endnote) and you will find reasonably detailed instructions for doing all of this.
 
Are you refering to Endnote for adding bibliographic reference in the text? Now I'm using Office 2004, which doesn't support Endnote, but when I was using Office X I remember that Endnote would automatically refresh your references, if they are all refering to the same reference library... For other features of the text, you can find all the infos you need in word's help, simply searching for 'master document'...
 
yes? that's a really good news, Viro! Thanx, I've to ask my University if they have already bought it...
 
OK, I think I found the main reason the thesis grew so quickly in file size (25MB --> 50+MB). I checked my preferences and "allow fast saves" was unchecked and "track changes" also was not activated. The increase in file size is attributed to the incorporation of several Micro$oft Excel charts that show UV-visible absorption spectra; two spectra contain about 1,500 data points each, and another two spectra contain 21,120 data points each. I confirmed this by copying the two largest charts into a new Word document. Upon saving the file I noticed its size as 26MB.

Thank you all for your help and suggestions. I really value the assistance people offer from these forums on the site.
 
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