files open slow (2007)

Topic

New Reply

All of a sudden it takes office a few minutes to open a word document or an excel sheet. It doesn’t matter if I go from recent documents or open the application first. once the document is finally open it runs fast enough and I have no trouble printing. Nothing else I do on my computer takes very long with the possible exception of Outlook retrieving mail. While it’s getting new mail everything slows down.

Reply | Quote

Replies

Do you have a new virus scanner, or a new version?
If you have Norton/Symantec AntiVirus, make sure you turn off the Office plug-in.
You might disable your antivirus program temporarily to see if it makes a difference (don’t forget to turn it back on!)

Reply | Quote

No, I use Nod32 because it slows nothing down and is very light weight.. I tried disabling it; no difference. it is a good thought though.

Reply | Quote

Have you recently added any new hardware or software? Any hardware of software updates?

Joe

--Joe

Reply | Quote

I did have some trouble updating spybot. when I installed the update and wanted to reboot the reboot got hung up in the little thermometer dots splash screen it would never end. I finally had to restore from yesterday to reboot. I then tried to uninstall spybot but it won’t because it’s missing a .dll.

Reply | Quote

Reboot after updating Spybot Search & Destroy? If I update the signature files I never have to reboot…

What happens if you try to reinstall Spybot?

Reply | Quote

It’s a new iteration of spybot (1.6.2.46) not just the signature files. I’ve been afraid to do that but your prompting made me try it. Restart brought back the endless thermometer but a cold reboot brought it back. I ran spybot, it just found the usual cookies. It still takes forever to find a file

Reply | Quote

I found a suggestion that appears to have helped several people who had similar problems. The following is for Windows XP, in Vista it’s more difficult.
– Start Windows Explorer.
– Select Tools | Folder Options…
– Activate the File Types tab.
– Locate and select the DOCX extension.
– Click Advanced.
– Select the Open action.
– Click Edit…
– Click in the “Application used to perform action” box and go to the end.
– If the string does *not* end in “%1”, add a space and “%1” (including the quotes!) at the end.
– Clear the DDE check box (it will be ticked again automatically later, so OI’m not sure if this is relevant)
– OK your way out.
– Test whether it has helped.
– If so, repeat for other extensions that open slowly.

Reply | Quote

That bizarre bit of black magic actually worked!!!!
I thank you very much!
Terry

Reply | Quote

Wow, I actually didn’t have much confidence in that suggestion. Glad it worked!

Reply | Quote

I’m very grateful that the files open fast now, however, they will only one from opening the application first and picking a document from that recent list or open/. If I try to open by double licking a file in my documents or picking from the recent document list from the start menu I get a window telling me it can’t find it.. I can live with this but it would be nice to have work the way it’s supposed to.

Reply | Quote

You could try having Word re-register the open commands for its file extensions. This article gives a little more information on the /r startup switch: How to use startup command line switches to start Word 2007, Word 2003, Word 2002, and Word 2000 (MSKB 210565).

Reply | Quote

Here’s more info about opening files in Excel: Fix the slow startup of Excel 2007.

Reply | Quote

Did you put the double quotes around “%1” when you added it to the end of the command line like Hans said in his message? If you did not, that would cause this problem with any file that has a space in the name,

Reply | Quote

Yes I cut and pasted including the quotes. I just ran the Office repair thing in the hopes that it would fix it. I no longer get the “I can’t find it” message but it’s back to taking several minutes to open a document. I think I will just go back to opening the application first, it’s fast that way. Instead of technology adapting to us, we always end up adapting to technology.
Terry

Reply | Quote

I tried watching processes in the Windows Task Manager while it’s looking got a document. The only resource it draws from is taskmgr.exe but it never goes above 15% in the CPU column. Nothing else shows much activity.

Reply | Quote