I've done some experiments and it looks like the slow performance is not necessarily the same issue as the issue that causes word to crash/hang/freeze.
I believe I have diagnosed the cause of hang/crash/freeze problem when a user tries to "update citations and bibliography" with a large number of sources - It appears to be caused by Word's UNDO handling.
Basically for every single citation update it seems to create an undo entry in the undo stack. In my case each one of these is between 8Mb and 14Mb (I'm guessing the difference relates to the number of times a source is cited in the document). So for 900+ sources, we are looking at an undo stack of 7 to 13 Gigs. Add in the application and document and we are talking about another 45Mb on top. I don't know if there's a finite addressable limit of a 32bit app, but it looks like what's happening is that as the "update citations and bibliography" proceeds, it just creates a HUGE UNDO STACK which eventually exceeds either some internal address limit or operating system limit or physical resources limit (in my case it gets to about 1.8Gb in RAM). Then it falls over. Since it falls over when Task Manager shows I still have plenty of memory left - I think it's an internal limit.
How did I come to this conclusion?
I've spent days researching. I previously tried switching off the autosave - no change.
I monitored the memory use by the process winword.exe while manually updating my citations one at a time. The app with a blank doc takes about 25Mb. Add in my doc and it rises to 45Mb. Edit the first citation - rises to 57Mb, edit next - 69Mb, and so on. I quickly get to 150 or 170Mb before I chicken-out, exit "manage sources," and save the doc. I verify sources.xml is also updated.
SAVE does NOT clear the undo stack - there's no change in memory before and after SAVE.
On the ribbon, the Undo button offers multiple instances of "select bibliography style" even after save.
In older versions of word you could turn off the UNDO function, but it appears from Word 2007 and up you can't. If anyone knows of a way to disable UNDO in Word, that should solve this issue.
On other fora I hear that there has been no significant change in Word 2010 or 2013 in this area.
It's a diagnosis but not a solution.
I believe I have diagnosed the cause of hang/crash/freeze problem when a user tries to "update citations and bibliography" with a large number of sources - It appears to be caused by Word's UNDO handling.
Basically for every single citation update it seems to create an undo entry in the undo stack. In my case each one of these is between 8Mb and 14Mb (I'm guessing the difference relates to the number of times a source is cited in the document). So for 900+ sources, we are looking at an undo stack of 7 to 13 Gigs. Add in the application and document and we are talking about another 45Mb on top. I don't know if there's a finite addressable limit of a 32bit app, but it looks like what's happening is that as the "update citations and bibliography" proceeds, it just creates a HUGE UNDO STACK which eventually exceeds either some internal address limit or operating system limit or physical resources limit (in my case it gets to about 1.8Gb in RAM). Then it falls over. Since it falls over when Task Manager shows I still have plenty of memory left - I think it's an internal limit.
How did I come to this conclusion?
I've spent days researching. I previously tried switching off the autosave - no change.
I monitored the memory use by the process winword.exe while manually updating my citations one at a time. The app with a blank doc takes about 25Mb. Add in my doc and it rises to 45Mb. Edit the first citation - rises to 57Mb, edit next - 69Mb, and so on. I quickly get to 150 or 170Mb before I chicken-out, exit "manage sources," and save the doc. I verify sources.xml is also updated.
SAVE does NOT clear the undo stack - there's no change in memory before and after SAVE.
On the ribbon, the Undo button offers multiple instances of "select bibliography style" even after save.
In older versions of word you could turn off the UNDO function, but it appears from Word 2007 and up you can't. If anyone knows of a way to disable UNDO in Word, that should solve this issue.
On other fora I hear that there has been no significant change in Word 2010 or 2013 in this area.
It's a diagnosis but not a solution.