What word processor can handle really large text files?

October 10, 2024 4:44 AM

I have a large - but not insanely large - Word file: 4,000 pages, 110 MB. Microsoft Word is glacially slow, barely usable when I'm working with this file. Could you recommend a word processor for Windows, preferably free, that could handle this large file better?

A side question: my computer has got 32 GB of memory and an i9-11900H processor. Surely this computer should be able to handle a 110 MB file with ease? Why is editing this file so slow?

posted by Termite to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

Word starts eating itself (constant repagination) when given a document over about 1000 pages, so I would split this into 6 or 8 separate documents and then create a master document to pull them all together and generate a Table of Contents etc. If you do all the editing in the subdocuments you will find it massively faster.
I know some people skip the whole master-sub documents thing and just set the page numbers in each file manually so that is also an option.
posted by Lanark at 5:07 AM on October 10 [8 favorites]

my computer has got 32 GB of memory
I don't think it is a memory limit but something to do with Handles. Word uses a lot of handles.
posted by Lanark at 5:10 AM on October 10

Response by poster: Thanks! How do I make a master document? Can I search - reasonably quickly - for words or phrases within the master document?

And the separate subdocuments - the only way I could think of is to highlight and copy 500 pages to make a new document. Surely there is a more convenient method?
posted by Termite at 5:47 AM on October 10

You could try LibreOffice. It has decent compatibility with Word docs and is freely available.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 6:30 AM on October 10

I would expect Google Docs to handle a file this size. Should be easy to try out.
posted by snarfois at 7:09 AM on October 10 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I would expect Google Docs to handle a file this size. Should be easy to try out.

Good idea, but I got this: "The file is too large to open. Please try with a smaller file."
posted by Termite at 7:16 AM on October 10

A short Microsoft Word Master Document tutorial video that shows adding sub-docs to a master document and including headers and a Table of Contents to the master.
posted by mmascolino at 7:42 AM on October 10

Scrivener should be able to handle this document with no issues at all.
posted by yellowcandy at 7:57 AM on October 10 [1 favorite]

Probably not an option, but just in case: consider editing as a Markdown file and converting to Word when needed. There are many editors optimized for massive text files.
posted by SNACKeR at 8:09 AM on October 10

I second trying this in Scrivener, but with the caveat that it might not be worth it if there's a lot of formatting involved. One thing to note if you give it a try is that you'll have to "Compile" the whole thing into the format of your choice for the "final" version with page numbers, etc.
posted by yasaman at 8:33 AM on October 10 [1 favorite]

It looks like Scrivener can import and export Word documents.

Would splitting it up into a file per chapter make sense?

I've worked with a book of about 1000 pages, as a Markdown file per chapter. Pandoc might help with that conversion. Separating images from text was useful; the actual text was much much smaller and easier to work with. (I personally use Sublime Text as a text editor.)

For working with and organizing lots of Markdown files, I've heard good things about Obsidian.
posted by Pronoiac at 10:23 AM on October 10

I would double check whether you had 64 bit or 32 bit Word installed. 64 can access more memory and may handle it better if you are using 32 bit.
posted by Apoch at 2:40 PM on October 10