LibreOffice Extremely Slow in Mac OS Sierra

[RogerPaul]

Allocating more memory to LibreOffice fixed the performance issue for me on around one dozen Mac OS Sierra machines:

1. In the LibreOffice Menu go to LibreOffice > Preferences (on Windows and Linux go to Tools > Options)

2. In the Options dialogue window choose LibreOffice > Memory

3. Allocate more memory, for instance:

Image Cache:

Use for LibreOffice: 1'024 MB

Memory per object: 64.0 MB

Remove from memory after: 00:30

Cash for Inserted Objects:

Number of objects: 100

4. Of course the amount of memory you can allocate to LibreOffice is limited by the RAM available on your box. So you might wanna find your optimal configuration by testing different memory settings.

5. Mac OS Sierra needs significantly more RAM than older Mac OS versions. If your box has less than 8 GB RAM available then consider upgrading to 8 GB.

Hopefully this will work for you too!

[charlie.it]

@RogerPaul wrote: “1) In the LibreOffice Menu go to Tools > Options”

If you have a Mac system or if you know it you should know that there is nothing in Tools > Options.
You have to go to LibreOffice > Preferences.

[RogerPaul]

You’re right, the navigation path is platform-dependent:

On Mac OS Sierra go to Menu > LibreOffice > Preferences > LibreOffice > Memory

On Windows & Linux go to Menu > Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Memory

[dottore]

this is one of the best answers to a question I have ever seen. You are clear about what needs to be done and don’t assume that the reader is a computer guru with special knowledge. thank you.

[danielharvey]

I have this problem. I’ve found the workaround described here works for me.

Summary: Launch directly from executable within the application archive (/Applications/LibreOffice.app/Contents/MacOS/soffice for me).

[dottore]

If this is indeed a memory allocation problem (i.e. the default memory allocations are too small) then the developers should fix this by coming up with an algorithm that allocates memory in a way that gets good performance in most cases. Granted, it won’t be easy, but it should be possible to look at the amount of memory in the system and then make an educated guess at the amount of memory that should be allocated.

FWIW I am currently trying the memory allocation adjustments recommended in an earlier post by Roger Paul and they seem to be helping. I’m just saying this is a lot to ask of average users.

I’ve been working with computers since the mid 60’s and while I thought paging might be the cause of the problem, I had no idea that LO had default memory allocations set. If it weren’t for this forum, I wouldn’t have figured it out. If I couldn’t figure it out, how is the average user going to figure it out?