Word for Mac M1 - massive memory usage

Question

Early I raised a ticket about a Word issue in which I mentioned that macOS had told me it had run out of application memory. At that point, memory usage by Word was over 68 GB. Obviously a big problem.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/word-navigation-displaying-grey-document-area/4077379f-d007-44f7-8770-aa6c17701f3f?messageId=a682c11f-0f1a-489d-b64d-71891cc2a4e0

[PII is removed by Forum Moderator]

Answer 1

Hello RodHewitt,

Thanks for writing back and sharing the detailed information with us.

As per the update, I would like to confirm whether this problem happens when you perform those actions on a specific Word document or any Word document?

If it's any Word document, I suggest you launch your Mac in the Safe Mode and check whether you can work with the Word app without any problem.

Disclaimer: Microsoft provides no assurances and/or warranties, implied or otherwise, and is not responsible for the information you receive from the third-party linked sites or any support related to technology.

If the error persists, I suggest you try the following steps and check the outcome:

Quit all Office apps> Open the Finder> Click Command + Shift + G> Enter ~/Library/Containers> Scroll to Microsoft Word> Move it to the Desktop location> Restart your Mac> Re-open the Word app to check the result.

If the problem is only with a specific Word document, I would like to know whether the same problem happens when you copy the content of the problematic Word document into a new Word document? If yes, can you try to split the document into two or three new documents and see the outcome?

Appreciate your patience and efforts!!

Best Regards,

Mia

Answer 2

Thank you Cliff,

I think I had been changing the paragraph attributes of an equation - to add 3 pt before and after. The equations are in a table. I then tried to use Command+Y to redo that to another instance - and it went mad.

Word (indeed the whole machine) was extremely slow - then I got a warning that there was no application memory available. Had to force quit Word.

I did shut down and restart. The 68 GB issue has not yet occurred again. I had been keeping an eye on memory usage and until then Word had only been around 1.3 GB at most.

No anti-virus is in use.

Answer 3

Dear Rod,

Welcome to the forum here.

Regarding "At that point, memory usage by Word was over 68 GB.", may I know what action you did when the issue happened? Does the issue only occur when you take some specific actions in Word for Mac?

If it is convenient, I suggest you restart the Mac, temporarily close all other applications (include the anti-virus software) and then only open the Word for Mac application and do some tests to check whther the issue occurs.

Thanks for your effort and time.

Cliff