Word 2007 Doc Slower to load and save than 2002

[cadmanof50s]

I have recently upgraded my MS Office to 2007.
I have a very large Word Doc originally saved in MS Word 2002. I have
converted it MS Word 2007. The document takes MUCH, MUCH longer to load and
to save than the original. The original file (about 500K larger) opens and
saves in a fraction of the time.
Is there a way I can speed up the open and save process on with the newer MS
2007 doc?

 

[grammatim]

Save it as a Word2007 .docx?

 

[cadmanof50s]

Yes. I am saving it as as .docx file.
The .docx file opens and closes very, very slow as compared to the same file
that is stored as just a .doc file.

 

[L Sangree]

Do you have any links to Excel in your Word document?
If yes
Have you unchecked "Update Automatic Updates" (Office Button, Word
Options, Advanced)?
If yes
Close all your applications and start Task Manager
Open your Word Document in a small window so you can see Task Manager
You will see a new process start and stop for Excel for EVERY link
in your document which obviously slows down the opening

A Microsoft engineer confirmed for me that this is a known issue with no
known solution. He advised us to save all documents in the binary (.doc,
..xls) format instead of the new XML (.docx, .xlsx) format since we have so
many links that some of our docs take FIVE minutes to open.

Is this a problem for others? Why doesn't unchecking the update box STOP
this? Why is this STILL a problem so long after 2007 came out?!