Hi everyone,

I'm having an issue with Word 2013 and I'm hoping someone can help. Seen as I got fleeced for my TechNet subscription this year (the price given on the invoice doubled when I called up to pay!) Id very much like to see a speedy fix from the Microsofties please! :D

Recently, I've found that Word will consistently exhibit high CPU utilisation, ~50% on a dual core second generation Core i5.

This continues, even when Im not providing any input to or interacting with the Word window and even when the Word window is covered by other windows. Minimising Word causes its CPU usage to drop back down to zero.

The strange thing is that, so far, Ive only observed this with a single document. I started writing this document at the start of this week and its been authored exclusively on Word 2013. In fact Im the only one whos editing it and Ive only used a single computer (and this one single install of Word 2013) to do so

Theres nothing particularly unusual about this document, and a different but similar document which uses the same themes and features (in fact the theme for the second document was created from the first one) doesnt appear to cause the same issues. Both these documents are stored on SkyDrive, and are being edited directly from there.

Initially I tried the much recommended tweaks of disabling hardware graphics acceleration and sub-pixel positioning, however neither of these has had any effect.

I investigated a bit further using Sysinternals Process Monitor, and found that while Word is using a lot of CPU its actually looping very, very quickly polling for the existence of the registry key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Avalon.Graphics.

This key doesnt exist on my system, and a quick test I conducted where I created it just lead to Word looping polling for more non-existent registry keys.

 

My system is a HP Folio 13 running Windows 8 Pro x64 with Office 2013 (RTM, not Beta) 32 bit. Both Windows and Office are fully patched, as is everything else on the system.

 

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer.

Chris

Hello again,

 

After working on my problematic document some more, I believe Ive found the cause of the issue.

@Microsofties I think this one is either a bug or a dodgy OOTB template

 

I noticed that the high CPU usage only seemed to occur when the documents footer was displayed. Experimenting with some careful scrolling and zooming to hide footer (without actually using the hide white-space option) seemed to confirm this so I investigated the footer a bit more.

My document was using the standard Word Facet (Odd Page) footer template with a couple of fields added to suit my needs, namely Publish Date and a page number.

The template seems to be structured such that the content of the footer is inside two nested text boxes (one inside the other). I also noticed previously that this footer template also appears to jump up each page and back down again as I scrolled.

So I deleted the footer and its text boxes, and recreated the same content, in the same position (using the standard paragraph alignment tools) by hand without the nested text boxes. This has, so far, fixed the issue!

I also noticed that the CPU usage dropped right down to idle the moment I deleted the nested text boxes.

 

Altogether, this leads me to conclude that the Facet (Odd Page) footer template in Word 2013 is the source of my issue. Specifically, I believe that the use of nested text boxes in this template causes Words interactions with the .Net 4.5 WPF to go a bit nuts, as evidenced by the infinite loop of request for the non-existent Avalon.Graphics WPF registry key I mentioned previously.

 

It would be nice to see some feedback on this one, Microsoft people, if only to know if this is actually a general issue or is specific to my document!

Thanks, Chris

Hi Chris,

This is a quick note to let you know that ng to involve someone familiar with this topic to look at this issue.

Hi Chris,

Based upon your information, I tried to test this out but was unable to. Could you provide me with exact steps to reproduce your issue?

Thanks,

Ross

I have the same problem when a footer or header is displayed. I believe the header was created in a previous version of Microsoft Word but cannot say what version.

The document that is displaying the header is not the same document that I am typing in. When I scroll the header out of view then my typing and cpu performance improve tremendously.

My header only has two lines of text (company name, ABN) then a horizontal bar across the screen. Deleting the contents of the header did not improve anything.

I cannot help further as I don't know where else to look for more information.

Ross,

I was able to duplicate the same behavior with the Ion template. It originally had even and odd headers/footers. Once I unchecked that box to make the headers and footers the same regardless of page number, my new Lenovo U430 Touch stalled typing. I was in Print Layout at the time. If I switch to Draft view, CPU goes to 0.

When I switch to Print view, the lag on everything, including Ribbon activation of the Header contextual tab is significant. My doc is 41 pages long, 2000 words and a ton of graphics.

If I turn on Different Odd and Even Page header/footer setting again, CPU drops to 0. It's only when I go from different heading/footers to the same header/footer on every page does the CPU peg.

Hope this helps track down the issue. It's been there since Beta but I could never track down the steps.

Treb Gatte, Project MVP | @tgatte | http://AboutMSProject.com

Thanks for your query, because it helped me find that my high CPU was caused by Word not coping with spelling and grammar checks, so I switched the 'as your type' spelling and grammar options off and fixed my problem.

Similar issue for except mine occurred while I was typing 

I got to tell you it had gotten so bad for me as I typed that I watched the CPU usage jump (I have the performance monitor up while working) and there was a major delay as I was typing so I couldn't see what I was typing until several letters later which became frustrating to say the least. I turned of the "as you type" proofing options and everything was fine... I have a similar issue in Outlook and am going to check those options to see what is causing these delays and turn those off as well. Thanks for the help

This is crazy... newest version of word runs worse than Word 6.0 on Win 3.1

I have same problem. Win 8.1 / Word2013 / i5 / 8GB ram -- stalls as I type... can't see letters until after I've typed quite a number.

Has anyone come up with a fix for this? If word is the active window with no typing it sits at 40%. When typing goes to 75%?

Also tried quit some solutions but nothing seems to help to lower the cpu usuage below the 50% for Word, even when I not type. But when I change the views in the view ribbon to Draft then the cpu usuage directly drops to below the 25%, using the print view and the CPU goes back to the more then 70% after release the mouse button.... al other solution like disabling grafice enhancer etc does not have any effect on my Windows 7 machine running Word 2013..

It looks like the issue still exists. I installed initially Office 2013 64 bit and my Word was slowing down while typing which was not acceptable for me. I discovered then that the CPU usage is approx. 20-30% for no reason caused by WinWord. Then I came with an idea that this must be an issue with 64 bit office and after installing x86 version it was worse as CPU usage went up to 50-60%. I found then this thread and tried to change the footer as described in one of the posts and problem magically disappeared. What is interesting, the issue became more and more annoying while number of text boxes in the document grows. My document is 40 pages long, has typically 1 picture per each page and for each picture I use one or more text boxes. Together with textboxes in footer this must not be digestible by Word2013. Can somebody from Microsoft look at this?

I Had the same problem and opened a case with Premier. We found the problem (hotfix should be arriving)

I could reproduce this error by:

1) opening outlook
2) Opening a word documnet in oultlook in PREVIEW mode
3) document could not be openend in preview mode
4) word "hangs" 1 core at 100% cpu time
5) Close outlook and winword.exe disapears

Problem lies with a reg key and you cannot access it (denied, try with process explorer)
Option: Update fields before printing for word (Reg_WORD : refresh_5_1 = true)

HKU/%USERSID%/Software/Policies/Microsoft/office/15.0/word/options/vprsu
and
HKCU/Software/Policies/Microsoft/office/15.0/word/options/vprsu

Close outlook, kill word process

Backup both keys, delete them and restart outlook.

Try again.

Problem should not occur anymore.

Best regards

Alexandre Delen

• Proposed as answer by Alexandre Delen Thursday, August 21, 2014 5:40 AM
• Edited by Alexandre Delen Thursday, August 21, 2014 5:41 AM

could you try to "Disable" the "Show preview handlers in preview pane" ? following this link and let me know if that solve your pbs ? 

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/35233-preview-pane-hide-show-preview-handlers-windows.html

September 2015, and this problem still persists, two and a half years later.

So now I work with the footers off the screen....

As I once said to my banker, the only reason you are still in business, is because everybody else is even worse than what you are.