Recently I have seen quite a few issues with Office 2013 running very slowly and not being responsive.
A client had it so bad that you could type into a Word document and the text would lag about 1 minute behind. (I am not talking about the smooth type feature in 2013 either!)
Office 15 has built in hardware graphics acceleration which can cause issues when running on a slow machine.
To turn this office open any office product (Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc) Click File -> Options -> Advanced -> Scroll down to the “Display” section -> Uncheck “Disable hardware graphics acceleration” and restart office. (*See notes below*)
This should hopefully resolve the issue with Office 2013 being slow when compared with other software.
NOTE: As per the below there has been quite a lot of feedback for this issue.
Some people have had the issue where it is unchecked by default and checking it resolves the issue.
This issue occurs where it is unchecked but you have a graphics card that wants to accelerate the feature (The opposite to the above but causes the same issue). In this case you should check the box.
NOTE2: 09/03/2016
There have been a couple of comments relating to a recent Office update which causes the same issue I stated here 3 years ago.
You can now also try uninstalling Office update KB3114717 as listed below if the above does not work for you.
Thank you all for your feedback!
Lostboy's Blog 
May 16, 2013 at 2:04 am
Thank you so much!! I have struggling for hours on this problem , trying every trick on google and this is the only one that worked.
August 10, 2013 at 4:21 am
Thanks, works perfectly!
The typing in word lagged behind about 1 second on my new (yes, new) Windows 8 computer and it was really annoying – with the new “smooth typing animation” turned off. I disabled the acceleration and now it works perfectly. You saved me a lot of time and effort so I didn’t have to downgrade to Office 2003.
August 15, 2013 at 8:23 pm
Thank you so much this worked like a charm! The checkbox was called ” disable hardware accelaration for pictures” in my office 2013
September 3, 2013 at 8:33 am
Yep – it works. Thanks for sharing your knowledge! Deltic Training.
October 14, 2013 at 9:17 pm
Thank you! Seems to have worked. Although for me i needed to check the “disable hardware accelaration for pictures” box rather than uncheck it…
October 15, 2013 at 8:37 am
Thanks for your added feedback.
October 27, 2013 at 11:37 pm
Thank you so much! You’re the only blogger that helped me!
November 30, 2013 at 7:41 am
Thank you very much!!!!
This solution made my day. I was struggling since many days!!!
January 8, 2014 at 6:28 am
The ‘Disable Hardware Graphics Acceleration’ was not checked, I checked it and this solved the problem. Thanks so much for helping me and all of the rest of us who have been having this problem!
January 17, 2014 at 4:24 am
Checking the flag seems to improve things for me … thanks.
February 9, 2014 at 5:08 am
I was struggling with this as well – though my Office 2013 also worked faster when not connected to the Internet (so I canned the useless SkyDrive – I use USB instead:-). But I found the advice confusing – *clearing* a box for disable HW acceleration has the effect of *enabling* the acceleration, which is the source of the problem, right? So checking the box is the right thing to do (at least, it seems to work for me).
March 1, 2014 at 3:45 am
This fixes it perfectly!! Thank you for posting this
March 26, 2014 at 2:54 pm
Thank you very much for posting this. None of the suggestions on Microsoft website solved my problem. But your solution worked. Thanks a lot.
April 2, 2014 at 12:23 pm
Thanks a million. I would have never have found that. I also had to check the box but it worked
April 10, 2014 at 7:07 am
Big Up Man! Much obliged this has been driving me crazy the last hour. Peace and Serenity x
May 16, 2014 at 1:09 am
Thank You – it now works properly 🙂
June 2, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Thanks for sharing this info. It works like a champ. Feeling so crappy about Win8, but meanwhile happying with the touch screen operations.
July 13, 2014 at 8:28 pm
Thank you very much for that!!!
August 2, 2014 at 7:03 am
I’ve tried this remedy, and various others suggested on the Web, and none of them work. I have largish, 3mb, docx files, with many footnotes and hyperlinks. Word 2010 handles them ok, except for occasional crashes. On Word 2013 the delay between keystroke and reaction on screen is several seconds, at best. I’m giving up and going back to Word 2010.
August 6, 2014 at 2:52 am
Actually, this “hardware acceleration” may be related but it is in general poor coding on Microsoft’s part.
You can fix this issue (though I hesitate to call it a fix) by simply keeping open one of the side panels: SLIDES or OUTLINE. It has to be about an inch or two wide and as long as that side panel is also open, then you will be able to type fast in the edit window.
I know it sounds stupid but try it. First hold down any text key in the edit window (with NO side panel) and you will notice how the text slowly appears after a few seconds and keeps filling in with a delay. Or just try to type normally and you will see your input get buffered.
Now, drag open that LEFT side panel that shows the slide preview our outline view…make it about 2 inches wide. Repeat the typing testing now and you will see things are completely responsive…this is irrespective of the hardware acceleration flag.
This is only ONE major problem with PowerPoint…they’ve done some bad coding since before the 2010 version and screwed up the entire package. I don’t know about 2013, but in 2010 the copy/paste don’t work correctly either…I would try to copy and paste between slides or documents and when I pasted something in (particularly shapes like lines, boxes, text, etc) it would look completely different from the original copy – it would be moved around and not aligned the same way. Just pathetic.
August 15, 2014 at 8:07 pm
WOW! This works. Amazing; thanks
August 18, 2014 at 4:51 am
I got this typing slow problem with word 2013 too recently. It only happens to one document. It is very annoying. Is anyone can help me to fix this problem? Thanks.
September 12, 2014 at 1:42 am
I was trying this solution but it did not help. In the end the problem was a (heavy) picture in the background on the masterslide. Removing the picture made the typing respons normal so I asked the design studio to supply another picture.
December 7, 2014 at 3:39 am
Thank you very much! I’m in Kingston Jamaica Struggling with Office 2013 – Unresponsive, Slow, Typing Slow. Until i found your fix.
Thanks a million times
February 11, 2015 at 5:27 pm
This worked perfectly at first but isn’t a permanent fix on my computer…no idea why. I ENabled it at first because the box was not checked off and it did the trick. However, after I saved the document and then continued to work, it started lagging again. I went back into the advanced display settings to make sure it was still enabled and it was, so I disabled it just to see what would happen and it started working fine again…I’ve toggled it a few times but it always seems to be saving the document that messes it up and now I can’t get it to work at all…please help. This is the most frustrating thing I’ve ever experienced with a computer haha
March 1, 2015 at 3:26 am
THANK YOU!!!!!!
March 19, 2015 at 9:57 am
Thank you!!
I also had the box unchecked by default, and checking it solved the lag issue.
March 20, 2015 at 12:40 am
your’e just amazing man…… i searched hours on google for this problem….. and one fool told me to disable my animations(yeah!)…. but this thing really works….
May 25, 2015 at 8:24 pm
I checked the “Disable hardware graphics acceleration” and then it seemed to work perfectly. I am using windows 8 pro n will definitely recommend this to many people. Thank you so much for this solution to our issue.
May 27, 2015 at 6:46 pm
Thank You!
I am amazed!
July 10, 2015 at 12:48 am
Yes, that sloved the problem! thanks!
August 7, 2015 at 8:45 am
Thank you thank you thank you!!! Gold star and some ice cream for you!
August 17, 2015 at 8:16 am
I love ice cream!
September 3, 2015 at 6:59 am
RE: “Some people have had the issue where it is unchecked by default and checking it resolves the issue.
This issue occurs where it is unchecked but you have a graphics card that wants to accelerate the feature (The opposite to the above but causes the same issue). In this case you should check the box.”
Yes, checking the box (it had been originally unchecked) worked! Thank you for posting this info. Word 13 was driving me crazy.
January 5, 2016 at 11:32 am
tried what was recommended but did not work. it seemed to work for about a sentence worth but then started to act up again. so i tried the whole check and uncheck the box exc. still no go. i even made sure that my drivers were up to date. checked for errors in the system and program but nothing. This is driving me crazy!!!
February 18, 2016 at 10:36 pm
I know your pain.
Uninstall this Office updates KB3114717
fixed for sure.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3114717
March 9, 2016 at 8:02 am
Thanks OM K,
I will add this solution tacked to the bottom of this post.
I believe this is actually a new error which has the same effects as the one I posted here 3 years ago but every resolution option helps.
January 19, 2016 at 6:24 pm
thank you so much! for some reason office does not like my gtx 950, a 200 dollar gaming video card what! anyhow this did the trick
February 17, 2016 at 1:19 am
I suggest that you check this link, in which the problem is discussed. It relates to a recent update that, if uninstalled, should correct the issue.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-word/extremely-slow-typing-in-word-2013-after-the-last/24ade9c5-b054-4533-9c56-b1e3be08c416
February 18, 2016 at 10:37 pm
Uninstall this Office updates KB3114717
fixed for sure.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3114717
March 1, 2016 at 2:41 am
Doesn’t work ;(
March 1, 2016 at 6:00 am
Thanks, great job!
March 9, 2016 at 9:59 am
Thank you for this article and especially OM K for listing that udpate to remove – I’ve been searching around for this problem for quite a while and have gotten sick of it.
Looking forward to stripping this all off our PCs
April 27, 2016 at 3:46 pm
Your an absolute star, Thank you so much.
I always suspected there were smart Kiwi’s.
July 23, 2016 at 3:08 am
Signing out did it for me. Didn’t even realize that I was “signed in”. Was working on a company computer that I did not set up. I suppose that the company tech guys set my Office to automatically sign into whatever Office signs into when they installed it. Seems bogus to me. Some documents that I work with should not be in the cloud at MS. Turned off the sign-in and all is well for now. Now looking for a way to permanently disable the sign-in connection
October 4, 2016 at 3:52 pm
Fantastic. This has solved my problem. It had been an issue for me ever since I purchased a new computer at the start of the year. Tried lots of options, but this is the first to make a substantial improvement. Thanks!
July 24, 2017 at 8:42 pm
I had the lag response when typing with word, and I simply changed the saving extension to a previous version and it now works perfectly.
October 5, 2017 at 3:31 am
For me, after check the box “Disable hardware graphics acceleration”, it became faster to open new word document.
May 26, 2018 at 12:25 am
JUST Ctrl+A then Ctrl+x then open new file Ctrl+N and past the contents of the file again Ctrl+V