El Capitan has done nothing to improve the experience of opening large Word documents in Office 2011. I've been using it for the past few weeks, with documents up to 100 pages or so. I haven't worked out yet what the problem is, it is not as simple as document size or the number of embedded images. Office 2011 seems mostly OK for me with El Capitan (I don't use Outlook so haven't been affected by those problems), but Word seems sluggish on some documents, with spinning beach ball or 'application unresponsive" messages. You'd think it would be OK, since I can only use one machine at a time, but I don't know if their activation scheme has changed and if my activation problems will continue.
Since MS Office 2016 only allows installation on one machine I am reluctant to upgrade. Microsoft is a real PITA regarding this issue
My Adobe products are fine and copy over or install on all my discs and machines as does all my other software. I do not have this issue with any other software that I use. On my last call, the representative I spoke to told me that they wouldn't allow another activation. Every time I want to reactivate, I need to through a whole song and dance over the telephone, which is extremely time consuming. This is due to new drives, new machines, clean installs and etc. Microsoft says I have activated my license 11 times over the years, which is probably true.
However, I have two system drives drives with my MBA (the internal drive is not the original) and five system drives in my cMP. I have owned the product since it's inception and am I allowed a license for 2 machines. My only issue is with Microsoft's arcane activation system. I have MS Office 2011 Home & Business Edition and it is working fine for me in PB 10.11.1.