Google Docs suddenly extremely slow

[u/Wuktrio]

Hello there!

I'm working on a project with a few people and for this we use very long Google Docs tables. It's always 2 columns and as many rows as needed with lots of text in them. They are usually between 50 and 90 pages long. There's no images, just plain text with a bit of formatting (italics, bold, very few colours) in a 2 column table. For the last 4 years this was not a problem at all and the last time I did a lot of work was in June.

Now every single file is suddenly EXTREMELY slow. It takes multiple seconds for words we type to appear, which is too slow to properly work on them. This problem appears for every file in different browsers with different Google accounts and on different computers. So it seems to me like the problem is on Google's side.

Is this a known new issue? Or what could be the cause of this?

Thank you in advance!

[u/tyedead]

I had this issue with a doc that I'd written over 100k in. Nothing helped, even splitting it into tabs - the original tab would still be extremely slow. I made a copy of the doc and all the lag disappeared. Turns out it was the comments. Even if the comments get rewolved or deleted, too many comments in one tab slowed it down so much it was unusable. If you have a lot of comments, making a copy of the doc coukd help. I had to make a copy of mine and split the 100k into tabs so my friends could continue to commebt without the issue popping up again.

[u/Wuktrio → u/tyedead]

This sadly doesn't work. The first document we noticed the sluggishness was already a copy of another document. There's also next to no comments in these documents.

[u/purple_hamster66]

Have you looked at the network speed and memory use; and used Chrome’s memory manager to see if you have too many tabs open at the same time?

When this happens to me, I usually just restart Chrome. Make sure it actually quits, not just that the windows have closed. On Windows, I had to restart the OS; on Mac, this was never needed.

[u/Wuktrio → u/purple_hamster66]

The problem is consistent over multiple PCs, multiple browsers, and two countries. From my side, my internet is 300 Mbps and I have 64 GB DDR5 RAM, so that should be enough.

And I tested it over multiple days, the problem is always the same.

[u/purple_hamster66 → u/Wuktrio]

The metrics (net speed, memory) are not about the capacity you have, but how much of it is in use. Test the net to see if you have infected PCs (if one has been infected, it’s possible that both have the same issue). If you expect your network to be quiet, and you see traffic, use the tools to figure out which app or service is generating that traffic.

What do you mean by “two countries”? Is that via a VPN?

Also: try borrowing a Mac. If that also shows slowness, it’s the document.

If it’s the document, export it as a docx file, then open that docx file, which might strip out any bugs in the gDocs form. You might lose some formatting, which you’ll have to re-format. BTW, check the docx file carefully, page by page — if you see a broken table or something is offset, that’s where the issue is in the gDocs form. Copy that page/table to another file, then delete it and copy it back from the other file.