Office 2003 Word and Excel Slow to load : Microsoft, Office, 2003, Word & Excel Loading Problems

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01.03.2008 at 02:35PM PST, ID: 23057137

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4.6

Office 2003 Word and Excel Slow to load

Zones: General Office Suite Software, Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet Software, Microsoft Word

Tags: Microsoft, Office, 2003, Word & Excel Loading Problems

Ok.. I have searched all over the web and EE for an answer and tried many suggestions. Maybe
I missed one or two, and I'm hoping someone will have an answer.

My wifes Corporate Laptop has Office 2003 installed. Word, Excel, Power Point, Outlook bundle.
When opened from the Start/Programs menu all open quick and nicely. Once open if you navigate
from the File/Open menu it will open documents just fine. BUT.. If I try to open a WORD or Excel
document, by double clicking the actual file, it takes approximately 1-2 minutes fo rthe file to
open.. It first loads Word or Excel after about a minute of thinking, then takes almost as long
to actually display the file in the application.

Both Powerpoint and Outlook work completely fine opening files either way.

Through my searches I found the following suggestions, all which did not help:
1. Delete the Normal.DOT files from the users Application Data/Microsoft/templates folder.
2. Delete the Word and Excel folders from the users profile Application Data/Microsoft folder.
3. Removed all Network printers not connected to the laptop or detectable from our home.
4. Ran the Detect & Repair option from the Help menu in Office Excel.
5. Defragmented the HD.

Her machine is fairly new, running XPpro and plenty of processing power and memory (1 GB).
Everything was working fine and then started having problems a few weeks ago.

She does not run updates, everything is administered.configured by the IT Admin who set
up the machine.

One thing I was not able to try was to remove Norton Antivirus, because I think corporate
would not be too happy. Frankly, I think Norton is a piece of crap and would NEVER install
it on any of my machines. The other solution, is not really an option as of yet either, which
is to reinstall OFFICE 2003 from scratch. I believe this machine is a ghosted machine, and we
do not have access to the Installation disks.

Any more solution suggestions would be greatly appreciated, and I will continue to
plug away on the web looking for an answer.

Regards,
Mike

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Question Stats

Zone: Software

Question Asked By: Mshine

Solution Provided By: shasunder

Participating Experts: 8

Solution Grade: A

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01.03.2008 at 03:54PM PST, ID: 20578374

David-Howard:

First, I completely agree with the Norton comment. :-)
I'm about to head out for the day and may have missed it in your post, but have you uninstalled and reinstalled Office? I don't know if this is an option for you or not. Does this issue occur under any other log in? Is it possible for you to recreate her profile if so?
David

01.03.2008 at 07:44PM PST, ID: 20579830

Mshine:

I wish I had the installation disks, but I do not. The whole machine was probably ghosted from
some general template.

This is a laptop given to her by corporate. It's one of those nightmare situations where they
have the thing locked down with a bunch of crap, and control by a GPO, because she connects
via VPN to some privacy sensitive documents and data.

I do not want to mess with profiles, because I am sure there are some
security rights and settings, keys, whatever, related to the VPN Authentication BlahBlah and
I do not want to screw that up for her.

Why will Word and Excel start up quickly from START > PROGRAMS link, and then if I go to
File > Open and navigate to the file it fires right up, but trying to start it from the actual file
icon takes minutes to open? That is the BIG puzzler here.

01.04.2008 at 02:03AM PST, ID: 20580856

Rank: Master

shasunder:

1. Try cleaning your registry with good registry cleaner. For example you can use Microsoft Regclean or try using Eusing Free registry cleaner
2. Did you try opening excel in safe mode and notice whether it is also too slow. to do this click on start menu -> go to run and type excel /s
3. 2. Did you try opening word in safe mode and notice whether it is also too slow. to do this click on start menu -> go to run and type winword /s or type winword /a
4. If you are using norton antivirus then please have a look at
http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread...threadid=26432
5. Do you have all of your service packs installed? Also, check out this MS article ..
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;280821
6. Do you have Acrobat Pro installed? If so, see the following:
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20030603073523853
7.open msconfig and ensure that it is set to normal startup
8. ensure that your excel file doesnot consists of many calculations, this is because every time when excel opens the files it will once again automatically recalculate.
9. Also be aware of macros in your excel and word file. this may cause your application to open very slow.

Accepted Solution

01.04.2008 at 08:50AM PST, ID: 20583856

Rank: Master

cogitate4u:

I have that same situation with Norton and Office 2003, Norton tries to scan every app and every file that opens from that app suite. Norton is still pretty darn good for virus protection, especially if you connect to the internet with that machine.

01.04.2008 at 11:17AM PST, ID: 20585224

Mshine:

Shasunder:

I have already read many of those articles I believe, but will review again.

Some answers:
1. Have tried clening the registry, computer is fairly new (less than 6 months), and I want
to avoid the registry as much as possible.

2 & 3 I read about starting in safe mode, but totally forgot to check this one out!!! Thanks for the
reminder! Will look into this.

4. Norton - All updates have been applied, and I cannot access any type of exclusion settings
for NAV. It has been locked down by IT Local GPO.

5. Yes all MS updates have been applied, even MS Office updates.

6. Acrobat Pro = No, Reader is installed and No Print to PDF printers have been installed.
I also made sure no network printers are installed.

8 & 9 No major macros or calculations in the Excel or Word Documents. I can create a simple
Word document, with one line of text, and it takes just as long to load as a full blown presentation
documents with images, etc..

Not sure if it is Norton scanning, because if I open Word from the program files menu
it opens quickly, and then open the file through FILE>OPEN it opens qucikly. Does Norton
only scan it you open files by double clicking them?

*********QUESTION:
Selective Startup is running, only because I disabled some uneccessary items. Nothing
related to printing, networks, or Office. I was affraid to set to Normal, because I thought
I might screw something up? If I switch to Normal, can I go back to Selective with the current settings?

01.04.2008 at 11:22AM PST, ID: 20585253

Mshine:

In addition:

I'm not sure the safe mode option will help, because if I go to START>RUN and type in
Excel /s or Winword /s it will be starting up the file the same as if I started from the
program files menu.. It will be opening the program only without any actual document,
and that I can do already by groing to START>PROGRAMS>Excel 2003 and then have
to manuall navigate to the document directory and open..

I read you could start these programs in safemode by holding down the CTRL key while
clicking the icon. If that is true, that might help.

01.04.2008 at 11:50AM PST, ID: 20585504

Mshine:

I tried holding down the CTRL key and clicking the icon for the word or excel document
but it had not effect.

Another thing I would like to add, which I also read elsewhere..

The weird thing is if I start up Task manager and watch which processes are starting
stopping or running etc.. I click the Document Icon (Word for example), and WINWORD.EXE
does NOT show up in task manager right away? Nothing.. And the only two services active
are my Wireless connection manager processes, which I checked out and they are ok.

Not until I see the Word Application pop up on the desktop , do I see it actually show up in
Task Manager!!

I', wondering if there is a file association problem, somehow? Where it is taking Windows a long
time to figure out what application is to be used when I double click the *.doc files?

01.09.2008 at 09:39AM PST, ID: 20620285

AFSCOPS:

I was having the exact same problem for the last few days. Today I went in and ran Advanced Windows Care (free for personal use) found at http://www.download.com/Advanced-WindowsCare-Personal/3000-2086-10407614.html
This cleared up the issue and everything opens in office fine now.
I believe the issue was the missing shared .dlls that AWC found.

Assisted Solution

01.09.2008 at 10:15AM PST, ID: 20620619

Mshine:

I will try anything at this point!! Nothing else has worked! Thanks.

01.11.2008 at 07:54AM PST, ID: 20637365

AFSCOPS:

Not a problem! Let me know if this works for you.

01.11.2008 at 11:07AM PST, ID: 20639153

Mshine:

Well now I am a little hesitant.. I thought this was a MS release, but see it is a 3rd party
cleanup tool..

Of course I read the reviews.. and saw some people have complete system failures after
running the tool.. Not sure what to do.. I only want to fix OFFICE, not run through the whole
system.

01.14.2008 at 12:12PM PST, ID: 20656241

AFSCOPS:

In advanced windows care you can run the scan and then it tells you what it finds. For example: It will tell you what missing .dlls and bad registry entries are on your machine. From there you will likely find ones that are MS Office related, and then you can choose what entries you want fixed.

You could have system failures if it "fixes" certain entries im sure, it has never happened to me, but you can use the tool to find what needs to be fixed specifically and not just everything at once.

01.27.2008 at 10:19PM PST, ID: 20757159

rbbalchtech:

I had the exact problem you describe: slow to load the Office apps and documents when double-clicking a document icon, but normal when running from the Start Menu or loading a document via File>Open. Not sure if this will solve your dilemma, but the user of the computer I was working on had loaded Kodak Easyshare and it was running in the background. I found that killing Easyshare via the task manager stopped all the strange behavior. See if your wife's laptop is running Easyshare or any other non-essential programs at startup. Maybe check the startup tab in MSCONFIG and disable some things to see if that helps.

Assisted Solution

01.28.2008 at 04:42AM PST, ID: 20758429

Mshine:

AFSCOPS:
Because this is a "Corporate" laptop, I need to explore other avenues other than installing
software that has ANY possability of screwing things up. She is not suppose to install
anything unless approved by Corporate first.

rbbalchtech:
Easyshare is not installed on this laptop. There are however many other apps starting up
with this computer, many related to VPN and wireless connectivity. I will see if shutting
them down has any effect.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

01.29.2008 at 03:42PM PST, ID: 20773505

LloydW:

Hi all
This issue has been bugging me for a few weeks and I've searched everywhere for answers. Thankfully for me I knew it had only started since mid Jan. Unfortunately the IT team were reconfiguring servers etc so I had to check out all the other aspects of the posts (all with nil effect).

Well I picked up on another post that mentioned a Verizon Wireless Sync module that when uninstalled resolved the problem. I had Nokia PCSuite installed (since I returned) and so uninstalled.

Bingo - problem resolved.

So does anyone know why the cell/smart phone sync softwares would be causing the clash?

Regards, Lloyd.

Assisted Solution

01.30.2008 at 12:49PM PST, ID: 20781107

Mshine:

Lloyd.. You may have hit upon something for me!! I think she was using a Verizon
Aircard for inet service, before it was cancelled. She no longer uses this card so
I will check to make sure the service and drivers were removed!

01.31.2008 at 06:35PM PST, ID: 20793628

ChiefIT:

I think you have a problem with context menu handlers or your computer trying to run WINZIP from a remote location>

You may experience other issues, like a slow right click of the mouse or a slow start button.

If you have problems with a slow right click or start button, let me know and we will begin fixing this issue.

01.31.2008 at 07:54PM PST, ID: 20794072

Mshine:

Well it wasn't any Verizon Software.. That was removed already.. I will look
into the context menu suggestion.. Thanks

01.31.2008 at 08:12PM PST, ID: 20794152

ChiefIT:

It's all right here:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Desktops/PCs/Q_23099683.html

Check WINzip trying to load from a remote location first. You will find the how to on the last comment of the posting, from myself.

Assisted Solution

02.01.2008 at 04:32AM PST, ID: 20795988

Mshine:

She does not have WinZip... The laptop is only using the built in WinXP compression tool.

02.01.2008 at 01:09PM PST, ID: 20800737

ChiefIT:

OK, then I guess let's look at context menu handlers. Comment provided by LEEW on that same post.

Olli

05.06.2008 at 11:56PM PDT, ID: 21513684

Nice! I've been pulling out my hair over this in weeks now. For me it was the Nokia software. I'm going to reinstall it clean when I need it again, just to test if it might have something to do with updates or something.

Thanx!

20080236-EE-VQP-29 / EE_QW_2_20070628