Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Speeding Up Document Display.

Speeding Up Document Display

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 13, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


If you routinely work with large, complex documents, and they are a bit sluggish in displaying on the screen, you may be interested in speeding up your display a bit. One way to do this is to use what Word refers to as Draft Fonts. With this option turned on, Word displays text using a single, bold typeface. It also suspends many other features, such as the displaying of graphics and typographic dingbats. (Dingbats are used to display things such as bullets and special characters.)

The Draft Fonts option affects only the display of your document; you can just as easily turn it off if you need to. To turn on the Draft Fonts option, follow these steps:

  1. Make sure you are viewing your document in either Normal or Outline view.
  2. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
  3. Make sure the View tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)
  4. Figure 1. The View tab of the Options dialog box.

  5. Make sure the Draft Font check box is selected.
  6. Click on OK.

You should also consider choosing the Picture Placeholders check box (in the Show portion of the Options dialog box). This causes the graphics in your document to be replaced, on-screen, with a placeholder that is much faster to display than the actual graphic.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (651) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Speeding Up Document Display.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

SUMIF Doesn't Recalc Automatically

What are you to do if you suspect that some of your worksheet functions aren't recalculating automatically? Here's some ...

Discover More

Spell-checking Uppercase Words

Excel's spell-checker normally checks uppercase words for spelling. If your worksheet contains a lot of acronyms, you ...

Discover More

Determining the Day of the Year

Need to find out the day of the year for a particular date? It's easy to do if you are using a macro. All you need to do ...

Discover More

Do More in Less Time! Are you ready to harness the full power of Word 2013 to create professional documents? In this comprehensive guide you'll learn the skills and techniques for efficiently building the documents you need for your professional and your personal life. Check out Word 2013 In Depth today!

More WordTips (menu)

Factory Default Settings for Word

Do you long for a way to reset Word to a "factory default" condition? It is almost impossible to get things to the way ...

Discover More

Returning Word to Default Settings

Want to set everything back to a pristine state in Word? Doing so is more involved than you may believe.

Discover More

Too-Big Toolbars

Work around Words inability to have a multi-row toolbar.

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is nine more than 1?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the menu interface (Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, or Word 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Videos
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.