If you are working on a massive, hundreds-of-pages-long document in Microsoft Word on an older or slower computer, you may notice significant input lag or sluggish scrolling. This is often caused by a feature called “Background Repagination.” By default, Word constantly calculates and recalculates page breaks in the background as you type, ensuring that the page numbers and visual layout are always perfectly up-to-date. While useful, this continuous calculation consumes system resources. If you simply want to write without your computer struggling to keep up, you can turn this background process off.
How to Turn Off Background Repagination
Before you begin, note that you can only disable background repagination if you are working in Normal or Outline view. If you are in the default “Print Layout” view, Word must constantly repaginate to show you the physical page boundaries, so the option will be greyed out.
- First, change your document view. Click the View tab on the Ribbon, and select Draft (or Outline).
- Click on the File tab in the top-left corner of the window.
- Click on Options at the bottom of the left-hand sidebar.
- In the “Word Options” dialogue box, click on Advanced in the left menu.
- Scroll down the extensive list until you reach the section titled General.
- Look for the checkbox labelled Enable background repagination.
- Click the checkbox to uncheck it.
- Click OK to save your changes.
Your typing experience should now feel much smoother. Word will now only calculate page breaks when you manually perform an action that requires them, such as switching back to Print Layout view or physically printing the document.