Microsoft Word features a helpful tool called “Live Preview.” When you highlight a block of text and hover your mouse over different fonts, font sizes, or text colours in the Ribbon, Word instantly changes the appearance of your highlighted text in the document before you even click to apply the change. While this is great for experimenting with formatting, it can cause severe performance lag on older computers, especially when hovering through a massive drop-down list of hundreds of custom fonts. If you want a faster, more responsive Word experience, you can turn this preview feature off.
How to Disable Live Preview
You can turn off this hovering effect deep within Word’s main options menu.
- Open Microsoft Word.
- Click on the File tab located in the top-left corner of the window.
- Look at the very bottom of the left-hand blue sidebar and click on Options. (If you are on a laptop, you may need to click ‘More…’ first to reveal Options).
- The “Word Options” dialogue box will appear. Ensure you are on the General tab in the left-hand menu.
- Look at the very first section at the top, titled “User Interface options.”
- Locate the checkbox labelled Enable Live Preview.
- Click this checkbox to uncheck it.
- Click the OK button at the bottom right of the window to save your changes.
From now on, when you hover over a font or a colour, your document will remain completely static. The formatting will only change after you actually click and apply your selection, completely eliminating the visual stuttering associated with preview rendering.