Word 2003 is slow

I would first off look to see if word is the only program with lag. May want to free up some RAM by uninstalling programs which run in the background you probobly dont use. Save your documents but Unstill the whole office sweet and re-install. That was my expeirence. I hope it helps

Try doing a disk cleanup, or at least a defrag. Although MS Office is a resource hog, it should not take long to open.
Also, look to see if any add-ins are installed, and disable them. It may be causing the problem as well.
If those do not work, run chkdsk and see if there is any disk issues.

I went through MSCONFIG but did not remove add ins,
I will try chkdsk and defrag as well.

Maybe some tweaking is required

http://tinyurl.com/7o5rp

http://www.tweakxp.com/

Warning if you tweak you could kill your system so tweak carefully.

First of all: Start your task manager then start word so you'll see if it's word that uses your ressources.

I have a custom 2.4ghz dual core with 1gb of ram and gobs of hard drive space running xp home with all the updates. I have already eliminated some of the documents in my recent documents folder, run chkdsk, deleted the normal.dot found on search and renamed the word key in the registry. I use AVG for antivirus. Programs are still slow to open or open and load a document. Everything else on the system seems to be running fine. Any ideas on what the problem is would be very much appreciated.

check this link:
it will tell you why,somebody had the same problem;
http://www.itags.org/msdn/2157535/

Word would take 2 minutes or more to just open the application or close it. I found a solution that worked on 2 different computers in my office. The Normal.dot was corrupted. To recreate Normal.dot close Word. Go to c:document and settingscurrent userapplication datamicrosofttemplates (where current user is your login name in Windows) and rename Normal.dot to anything (ie or Normal.do_), but do not delete it.
Restart Word. If it works faster, your Normal.dot was corrupted. In case you did create autotextes copy them from the old Normal.dot (then it should be renamed to ie Normal.old.dot). Refer to MS Word help files how to organise and copy templates.