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I have and iMac 27", 2010, Sys 10.9.5.
I am using (trying to) Nisus 2.1.2.
I have reinstalled several times.
When I edit a document i get the Spinning ball for some time then it stops and I can proceed until the next edit. It happens in .zrtf and in .rtf.
I am guessing it is trying to access iDrive which my system can do, or it is simply too intense for my iMac.
I am also guess I may have to go back to a legacy copy.
Help would be appreciated.

I have gone back to 2.1.1 but it is not better

I don't use iDrive, but can't you change the user-specified backup time to every 2 hours, to see if iDrive is causing of the problem?
Apart from that, I would consider the following:

1. Does this happen in other applications too?
2. Have you checked and repaired your disk with Disk Utility?
3. Run SMARTReporter. That's how I found out last year that my hard disk was slowly dying, with the same symptoms you describe.
4. How much free space do you have on your hard disk?
5. How many pages does the document have?
6. Does it have many images?
7. Did you download or copy the text from the Internet? Does the document contain gremlins (which were created by an other application) There is a macro available to remove such gremlins.
8. Quit Nisus. Drag the preference file to the Desktop and restart Nisus. A new preference file will be automatically created. See if that makes any difference.
9. Create a new, fresh "Nisus New File" and see if that makes any difference.
10. Do you save duplicate copies of each file to another location? If yes, then check whether that location exists. If you are saving a duplicate copy to an external disk and that disk is not connected, then make sure the disk is connected, or disable this feature in Preferences > Saving > Backups.

Most interesting.
I went back to an earlier edition that opened and saved instantly.
I made a copy of this file
I ran some of the later text through text edit as text only and the pasted that text into the copied file and all was well.
I ran Zap Gremlins but it did not detect the problem on the problem files.
I found that the spinning ball versions seemed to retain a lot of deleted text. I did something and heaps of deleted text appeared. Not sure how to clear the stuff in the future!

dumiya wrote:I found that the spinning ball versions seemed to retain a lot of deleted text. I did something and heaps of deleted text appeared.

Are you talking about versions, the feature in File > Revert To > Browse All Versions ?

Not sure how to clear the stuff in the future!

The first question you need to ask yourself is, did you type all the text into Nisus yourself, or did you copy and paste from the Internet, emails, PDFs or other applications.
A lot of invalid characters can be carried over in emails and PDFs. Copying and pasting text from a PDF, originally created on a Windows machine, can also insert a very large number of unwanted page brakes and section brakes into the document. If you have View > Show Invisibles turned on, then you should be able to see this, and removing it is very easy.

I would zoom the text up to ca. 300%, turn View > Show Invisibles on and look for invalid characters. They usually appear as strange, light gray characters, often as tilde or a square with an "x" inside; and they disappear when you turn off "Show Invisibles". If you find an invalid character, select it and use Edit > Copy > Copy to Find to get rid of all such characters.

Here are invalid characters I often get from emails:
However, invalid characters alone should not cause the problem, they are just a nuisance. So something else may be going on.

You can try to rebuilt the document by pasting one chunk after another into a new Nisus document, until you find the culprit.

Or use the Redact macro Martin wrote to scramble the text and make it unreadable. Then upload the file here in the forum so that we can take a close look at it. Martin's macro will make your text unreadable, but formatting remains intact, so chances are good we can find the culprit.

If you haven't already got Martin's macro, then you can download it from here. It's at the bottom of the page.

http://nisus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f= ... f+contents

dumiya wrote:I found that the spinning ball versions seemed to retain a lot of deleted text. I did something and heaps of deleted text appeared. Not sure how to clear the stuff in the future!

Did you accidentally turn on track changes? If you've been working in a document for a long time unaware that all edits were being tracked, perhaps a lot of extra content has been recorded? Depending on the content (eg: large images) that could increase the time required for saving.

If you continue to have trouble, you can always send us your document to diagnose the problem. If you don't want to post your file here, send it to us privately using the menu Help > Send Feedback. If you ask us, we can delete the document after testing.