Inordinately slow file closure (Word 97)

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On a P1 computer running Word 97 I noticed recently that files were taking an absolute age to close, even if no changes were made (i.e. just open & close). Multiple file closure (using Shift + File Menu then Close All) necessitates going away to make a cup of tea or similar as you can’t use the computer. The point being that you cannot access anything while closure is going on. Also the cursor does not change to an hour glass. In fact it appears as if nothing at all is happening. Although by today’s standards the computer is slow this is a recent phenomenon and it was never quite this bad before.

I have scandisked, defragged, removed normal.dot and subtracted any add ins (all the usual suspects) but so far no luck. Also tried a search of this forum but alas.

Anyone have any ideas what’s happening or any suggestions

TIA
Brian

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A few things to check (most of them you probably have):

• How much free space exists on the local hard drive? Anything less than about 50 to 100 MBytes often causes serious slow downs.
• Are you noticing any activity or attempted activity to the floppy drive?
• Are you running on a network – I have seen Word 97 really get slow at saving files on the network, but would save very quickly to the local hard drive? A reboot would typically fix it for a while – I think it had something to do with the protocol stack.
• Wat OS are you running on the PC? Word97 generally seems happier with Win98 than Win95.
• Have you tried rebuilding a basic normal template? Corrupt Normal.dot files can cause all sorts of strange things.
  [/list]Hope this gives you some things to try.

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In addition to what Wendell has suggested, check one more thing. Open Outlook & see if Tools/Options/Preferences/Journal Options… are turned on. If so, this causes an inordinate delay. You also said that you checked all add-ins. Did you check both startup folders? MS Office has a startup folder & Word has a separate startup folder.
Cheers,

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Thanks for the replies. Sorry, I have been away for a while. I ran through Wendell’s list – no avail. Phil – I checked all the add ins again and the Word Start up folder but there is nothing obvious. The behaviour continues.
Brian

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Hi Brian:
In addition to the Word startup folder, there is also one for Office. Go to Start/Find/Files & folders & search for startup. You’ll find more than one, but one will be in the Office path. Also, do a search for all your temp files & make sure those are deleted. See post 175824 Other than that, I’m not sure what to suggest.

It could be something on your operating system or some corrupt file?? Oh, I just noticed from your post that you didn’t mention Outlook. Did you check that?

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Phil
You are a genius. Your advice about Outlook was spot on. I have to confess I was a little skeptical and I tried about every other suggestion with no luck. You see, the PC with the problem was not hooked up to the net and Outlook wasn’t running to my knowledge. In fact I had to do a search for it.

Anyway, when I found it and opened it, sure enough Word, Excel and Access were all checked in the Journal section. Unchecking them all means I now have super fast (relatively) shut down.
ILTL
Cheers
Brian

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Hi Brian,

I’m wondering if your problem is caused by the MS ‘Findfast’ utility – it’s been known to cause dramatic slow-downs while it updates its indexes. To check this out, go into Control Panel. If you see ‘Findfast’ there, open it, select ‘Index’, then ‘Close and Stop’. If your system’s behaviour returns to normal, you’ll know you’ve found the culprit.

Cheers

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Brian, I am having a similar (but not exactly the same) problem on a Pentium2. Are you seeing this problem only in Word? Or is it appearing (and this is my problem) in other programs including Windows Explorer indicating it is more of a file-processsing problem than a Word problem. For me this is an intermittant problem and I am wondering if I am having ram failure.

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