Incredibly low performance with large document.

[SuavePotato]

Ok, I've given up on using a master document for this project after spending 30+ hours trying to get the formatting to behave properly.

I combined all the files into one document ~155 pages @ 20MB. Once doing so, everything worked fine until i saved the document and re-opened it.

Now whenever i try to scroll within the document to another page, Writer freezes for about 30 seconds between each page. This seems like incredibly low performance for such a small file size (i have a great computer system). I had a look at the images in the pictures folder (when renaming the file to .zip) and noticed some corrupted images, so i replaced every image in the directory. All images work fine now, but I'm still getting the 30 second wait between pages.

I'm starting to think that there is something corrupted in the document, but I cannot figure out what it is... Is there anything specific i can look for in any of the xml files? Or any applications out there for repairing writer documents? Or is this a known issue with Open Office?

Thank you everyone for your help, you all have been a huge assistance to me.

*Edit*
-I forgot to mention that I've maxed out the memory settings under Tools -> Options, made no difference.

*Edit 2*
-The issue seems to clear up once I have zoomed in past 138%, no freezing. If I zoom out to 128% i get the 30 second wait between pages.... This is weird.

[Phil]

Hi,

really sounds strange, I have not experienced this.

Some ideas:

• Try to save the document as MS Word (.doc) and load it again. That sort of forces OOo to reinitialize all the parameters of the document, as it is exported to a different format and imported again.
• Could it be an issue of your graphics adapter? The fact that it is connected to the zoom factor makes me think of that...
  Try updating the driver of the graphics adapter, or try on a different PC.
• You could also try to see if it occurs also in version 2.4.2.
  You may want to keep the 3.0 installation as your main install and run both versions in parallel. You'll find information on that in the OOo Wiki article Run OOo versions parallel

Hope that helps!
phil

[acknak]

Does the slowdown occur when scrolling every page, or only on certain pages?

I've only noticed significant slowdowns when the document contains large OLE/embedded objects (e.g.. diagrams or formulas), or external links to Internet resources (look under Edit > Links).

[Dingo-Dog]

O Yeah. same thing happened to me. opening my odt document created with 2.2 version of openoffice, with 3.0, produces an amazing slowdown, while same file, with 2.2 version, I can browse easily and painless, so, working with large files with OpenOffice 3.0 is practically impossible

my platform is Linux (Puppy Linux) version 3.0 used is a version I have packaged from sources downloaded from official mirrors

[Phil]

Hi Dingo-Dog,

so the issue might be cross-platform.
Do you also experience the dependency on the zoom factor?
Did you try saving as MS Word .doc and reimporting as I suggested above?
What about your graphics adapter?
And finally, would be interesting to know how 2.4.2 behaves for you.

Regards, phil

[Dingo-Dog]

so the issue might be cross-platform.

yes, it seems affect Windows and Linux

Do you also experience the dependency on the zoom factor?

Yes. Documents loads itself almost normally, but, when zooming you have a big slowdown

Did you try saving as MS Word .doc and reimporting as I suggested above?

No. I'll try

What about your graphics adapter?

NVIDIA Geforce 5500 - 256 MB onboard + 655 RAM memory of system, so, I don't think it is a graphic card issue

And finally, would be interesting to know how 2.4.2 behaves for you

few days ago packaged 2.4.2 from source for my distro. it loads more faster and zooming is lesser slow, but ever slow and I must go back to 2.2 version to make changes to my file

[SuavePotato]

I'm pretty sure it's not my system. I can load massive assemblies in SolidWorks (Autocad) with no visible slowdown. The problem happens with all pages and with different documents, all of which were created with 2.4.2. I might downgrade back to the older version to see if it fixes the problem, as i cant export and then import to a ms-office file (I'd loose too much formatting). I'll let you know how it works.

[Phil]

I might downgrade back to the older version to see if it fixes the problem

OK, good idea. Could be interesting to know from which version on the problem occurs.
You can get the old versions from FileHippo.
You may want to install the different versions in parallel. You'll find information on that in the OOo Wiki article Run OOo versions parallel

i cant export and then import to a ms-office file (I'd loose too much formatting).

OK, I see. But still it would be interesting to learn about the results of this try. It would then not be a workaround for you, but it would help to understand the problem better, i.e. whether the problem is related to the document structure.

@Dingo-Dog:
Would also be interesting to see which versions work for you.

Regards, phil

[mb01915]

This is an open office issue. It is not as bad with 2.4 as it is with 3.0 but it does not happen in Word on Windows or a Mac.

Very dissapointing. Despite all the self proclamations it is clear this is a not ready for prime time office suite.

[Hans]

I succesfully imported from Word (6 Mb-Writer file, which was loading and saving in Word in 2 seconds) in Open Office 3.0 Writer (0,6 Mb, there loading and saving as ODF 1.2 more than 60 seconds!!).
I tested the following factors, all without improvement:

1.Spellingchecker off.
2.Advanced Memory set to Systemcache
3.Virtueel Memory enlarged
4.Picture-cache enlarged above 20 MB, and above 2 MB per picture
5.Font- and Paragraph-styles partly removed
6.Table of contents removed
7.Headers removed
8.Bookmarks removed
9.Loading/Saving from and to RTF, and in other formats
10.Pictures removed and re-inserted as Jpeg
11.JRE de-installed
12.Back to Open Office 2.4.2

My Navigator counts 47 page Styles. This list reports in hierarchical state for each style "n converting" and "next n+1 converting” and so until finished (from n=1 till n=47). I don't know whether this has to do something with the problem.

[rogerl123]

Hi,

I too am trying to draft a large document using OpenOffice v3, and have had performance issues when scrolling. The document is currently over 60 pages long and includes graphics. I have noticed that the performance tends to deteriorate as I am drafting and scrolling up and down the document.

My computer is configured to run Windows XP Home Edition SP3 and have 1 GB of memory.

After reading this thread I rebooted with Ubuntu Linux v7 from a CD ROM, which loads OpenOffice v2.3. The performance was improved, (but I don’t think the JRE is loaded when booting from a CD, so maybe it is not a fair comparison).

I then rebooted to Windows, exported the document as a Windows XP doc and opened it in Word 2007. I don't appear to have any performance issues when scrolling the document in Word 2007 (if it is any consolation there used to be a problem with large documents in Word but it appears to have been solved and Word 2007 certainly appears to be very stable).

I don't think that booting in the Ubuntu environment loads the SUN JRE. But the issue appears to be the interaction between Windows, SUN JRE and OpenOffice v3.

So questions:
1. Should I use an earlier version of h Sun JRE and OO on Windows XP?
2. Is there a memory leak or conflict (I haven’t monitored any memory issues, but am not using advanced toolsets for this)?
3. I can resolve this by splitting the document into separate documents whilst drafting, but will have to combine them for the final draft. Will this cause a problem?
4. Other than completing the drafting in Word 2007, does anyone have any other suggestions about how to overcome this issue in OpenOffice?

Finally, if OpenOffice (and Star Office) is to be the MS Office killer that it could be, I think this needs to be resolved, along with VBA compatibility.

rogerl123

[acknak]

Sixty pages is not a large document. I routinely open >400 page OOo documents with acceptable performance. I have successfully edited documents of over a thousand pages--just as a test; I wouldn't say it was pleasant, but it works.

The major performance killers that I'm aware of are: large formulas (>1/4 of a page) and EPS graphics. Those primarily affect scrolling of the page where they appear. OOo Writer does not use Java for routine editing, and even if it did, I don't think Java is such a big performance block as it once was.

OOo has good support for master- and sub-documents, so you can split a large document into several pieces to avoid having to work with the whole thing at once, but I would say that's more of a strategic option, not a necessity.

OOo 3 definitely seems to have some performance regressions as a result of some of the new features. I expect that things will improve over the next couple of releases.

OOo also seems to perform somewhat better with large documents when running on Linux, compared to XP, but that may be just problems with a particular system.

[rogerl123]

Hi,

Thanks to acknak for the suggestion about master documents. This does appear to have resolved teh issue, although when I print the master document some graphics appear to be positioned wrongly.

[johnj]

same problem - jerky movements between pages of a report document of 40 pages with some 10 pages of graphics, each jerk about 10 to 30 secs. Fewer jerks happen when i scroll from the window bar but the jerking happens when the next page is about to be loaded if i use the mouse for scrolling. the problem is worse in 3.0 though it still exists in 2.4. As it stands i had to give up running reports on the writer and (shudder) returned to microsoft word. I tried disabling the virus program (Avira) with no difference. i have a great system with 4 gigs ram and a high performance n videa card so hardware is not an issue. As writer stands at the moment it can't be used for large documents. has anybody got an answer?
johnj

[acknak]

Same questions:
Does your document use any graphics in EPS format?
Any large formulas or other embedded objects?
Any remote (network or Internet) resources? Check under Edit > Links to see if any are present.

Wherever possible, anchor your graphics "as character" rather than "to paragraph", but that may be more important for stability than performance.

A 30-second "pause" is highly unusual and obviously unacceptable. It would be good to figure out what the problem is. It would easiest if you could share the document, but I understand that may not be possible. [Forum] How to attach a document here