OpenOffice.org, the very popular open source office suite, is well known for not being the fastest of applications but when working with large documents it can be become painfully slow as experienced by Adrian at Mercian Labels.
By far most recommended changes to try to speed up OpenOffice.org is to alter your settings under Tools>Options>Openoffice>Memory
My setting are shown below:
Undo number of steps 20
Graphic cache
Use…120MB
Memory per object 20mb
Cache for objects 20
Full details can be found here:
http://www.zolved.com/synapse/view_content/28209/How_to_make_OpenOffice_run_faster_in_Ubuntu
Also under Tools>Options>Openoffice>Java you can untick use JRE as it is not required for lots of functions (you can always turn it back on).
It all this does still not produce a fast enough file it may be worth looking at Abiword an open source, fast and lightweight alternative Word Processor which is available for Windows and Linux
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