Why is my LibreOffice so slow?
Solution 1:
How you can see here LibreOffice won't work well with ALL Java versions. The 1.6.0_21 seems to be the best java to use with LibreOffice. The 1.6.0_20 & 1.6.0_22 seem to be in a fairly good 2nd place place. The 1.6.0_24 was really bad and the 1.6.0_26 was even worse apparently.
To install 1.6.0_21 You should first purge every other Java versions from your system (icedtea, open, ecc. all included). Unfortunately, it seems near impossible to find compiled packages for precise, so you'll have to consider to build it from source (https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/sun-java6/6.21-1ubuntu1).
Otherwise, you could disable java plugin for LO, from Tools menu, then Options, Java, uncheck the box.
Last alternative, install other versions of java (such as the last Oracle 1.7) and select it in the list, to see if the problem solves.
Solution 2:
This past week, LO slowed considerably for me, no matter what document. Don't know if it was a change in Java, but LO became unusable in terms of entering numbers in Calc or even typing in Writer.
This is under 14.04 64-bit w/ 8GB of RAM. LO Version: 4.2.7.2, Build ID: 420m0(Build:2)
As mentioned above, turning off use of the Java runtime environment: Tools>Options>Advanced within LO, and restarting LO seems to have solved the problem, both for Calc and for Writer.