Takes extremely long time to open a Word document

It happens to every user.

check these

a) open word . go to help and click detect and repair

search for the file "normal.dot" , rename it to normat_old.dot and then delete "normal.dot"
open word and check if it is fast

b)check for spywares and virus in your system

c) Do all the updates for the word going to office.microsoft.com

d) OFF: Latest Information About How to Use Microsoft Office with the Norton Anti-Virus Microsoft Office Plug-In
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;329820


http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/sharedtech.nsf/docid/2004010810205113


e) if nothing works , reinstall office 2000

XL2000: File Opens Very Slowly
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;299372&Product=xlw

f) http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm

Sunray_2003,

Most of your points seem to be with regards to a single computer. This happens to at least 20 computers, most of whom are updated.

I will do some checks to see if our anti virus software may perform some additional tasks on Word documents. The On Access Scanner (Norman) causes a 20% increase for two seconds on access of a document. But why does it only slow down Word documents?

Check this

 WD2000: Word Is Slow to Start, Print, or Load Documents
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;280821&Product=wrd20

Hmm...

I tried the registry method - no success. It still takes about 30 seconds to open a Word document.

After trying myself on a few computers, I have noticed that only some have this problem. Maybe a little less than half of them. It seems that the Word "slow" has various meanings. But it does take around 30 seconds, on a few of the machines, every single time you try opening a document.

The printer option is interesting, but our printers are connected to the network and therefore it is not appliccable.

We also changed our subnet when we moved from Windows NT4 to Windows 2003 Server. We have noticed some network communication towards the old subnet. Some computers were directly connected (local port) to the IP address of the old printers. There are sometimes attempts to access them, even if they are no longer defined on each pc. This could be what Word is doing when it's starting???

have you tried reinstalling office in few of the machines that have this issue and does it resolve the issue

May be reinstallation is the answer here but try on few which has problem

Hi risoy,
Open an empty document.
Instead of file open, use Insert File.  Dose the document now open quickly (ignore is now called new document nn)?
If so the cause is a different default printer.  Perhaps you were using a PCL printer and now using a Postscript driver or visa versa so much churning of fonts?
Best of luck.

1. Do the docs open quickly if you copy them to the C: drive?
2. Have you checked the Tools-Options-File locations tab AND the Tools-Templates and Addins to see if anything is pointing to an addin on a network, or to a location that does not exist on the network
3. Sunray's Item D (Norton antivirus) is the most common cause of this problem

It seems like it is the default printer. If I changed it to another printer, documents open immediately. It is the same printer as before, but with a Windows 2003 driver instead of a Windows NT driver. Would it be advisable to change the driver from W2k3 to W2k/NT version?

The driver on the client and server can be different.  It's the driver on the client that counts.  Make the old printer the default and go into it's property's ports and change the port used to the new print share.
To sort out new clients, you have several options,
The Microsoft Driver
The vendor driver (there will be more than one)
The Microsoft driver that most closely matches the emulations supported by the printer.
The client downloads the driver from the server first time, so it's best to have the driver that best matches the fonts in the existing documents most closely.  Check options, compatibility, font substitution in Word and also font substitution in the advanced settings of the printer driver.  No need to make changes - just get a feel for the built in fonts, then choose the printer driver that best matches the fonts provided by the printer in use when the documents were created.
HP PCL fonts tend to have a narrower Arial than Postscript PS fonts.  

risoy

Anything new here?  Are you still experiencing this problem or has it been resolved?

Still experiencing problems. I have reinstalled all printer drivers and tried a number of things. Nothing seems to work.

What printer are you using?
What spool format are you using - try RAW?
Look up Emulation in the printer's manual.  Uninstall the vendor printer driver.  Install the Microsoft driver for the most feature rich emulation.  Set that as your default.  

OKI 14ex (standard printer), OKI 14i, OKI 8c Plus, a Brother and a few Canon inkjets.
It's set to RAW
It does PS and PCL. I will look for yet another driver...

Do documents converted with insert file remain fast to load?  I ask because information about the printer is held behind the last paragraph mark in the Word document and you may have a batch conversion job to remove the old printer information from the documents.

Yes. Documents converted with insert file is fast to load.

But doing that also changes some doc settings like margins...

I see there is a Remove Hidden Data Tool for Office XP and newer. Will this work? And is there one for Office 2000 which we have?

Opening Word using the "/a" switch (winword.exe /a) does not help. Still slow.

Word offers different features depending on the printer.  Old versions would only offer courier if no printer was installed.  The list of fonts is built via the printer subsystem, and fonts are different in W2K3 and previous versions, OpenType and all that.

All opening word with /a dose is tell it not to load the default document template.  Given that regardless of the blank default template doc's are slow to load and you are complaining about margins, then I suspect that the document defaults set on the printer is wrong and that the load delay is due to repagination.  Set the printers document defaults.  In a freshly started word set the language and paper size (making each selection the default) and close word (updating the normal.dot template).

If the driver on the client PCs has not being changed and is spooling the documents as RAW, then the client is doing the formatting and this should not have changed by changing the server.  It could be a Linux box, jet direct box or anything for all the printer driver on the client is concerned.  I suspect however you have changed the client's driver when connecting to the "new" printshare on the server.

In word, you should check tools, options compatibility in a richly formatted document, and check the font substitutions in place.  Compare this to the same with the old printer set as the default.

I don't know what tool will remove the printer information from the end of the word document.

As insert file works, to improve it (after correcting the margins similar to the page size default above) you can use the style organiser (hard to find - Format, Styles and Formatting, Show, Custom..., Styles, Organizer) to copy the styles from the old document to the new.

You may well find that the document(s) in question were created using a template that is no longer available. Especially if that template was on a network.

Open the document, wait until it opens, go to Tools...Templates and Add-ins. If you see a network template in the box labelled document template then delete it. Re-save the document and try to open it again.

Does that work?

The link to the template shouldn't be needed but if it is (for remote macros etc) then repoint to the location of where the template is now located.

risoy - to answer one of your questions above, there is a metadata assistant offered by Payne Consulting which removes metadata from files.  You should be able to download it at www.payneconsulting.com

HTH a little :)

JOrzech - sorry for not having replied to your previous message.

I checked the post, and tried out the suggestion, but not successful for me.
Read my comment here: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Applications/MS_Office/Word/Q_21038393.html

So is your problem that you have a non existant template in your documents that are slow to open, as I said earlier?

In the control panel, change you're folder options to display file extentions in Windows Explorer.  What file extensions have the slow to open files?  And the fast ones?  Can you revisit the advise offered and answer the questions asked or advise on progress or messages recieved at each step?

Interesting.

Well, the template does exist. We did change server, but the path to the templates is on a virtual network drive (M:\).

This is the interesting point. Opening the (slow-opening) document while connected to M:\ it gives me the template "M:\TplName.dot". If I disconnect from M:\ I get "\\OLDSERVER\FOLDER\TplName.dot".

So, when I ran the program while the network disk was disconnected, it worked!

Are you opening the documents using a shortcut (.lnk file in explorer)?  If so get shortcut.exe from an old copy of the windows resource kit and use shortcut -s tplname.lnk to make the link file non-tracking.

Nope, the documents are opened directly.

Well I would say the reason for the slow opening of the documents is most likely the fact that you had a template attached that was originally on the old server. This means that when you open the document it searches for that template (a few times) and then times out.

You'll notice the same if an office (2000 at least) document is e-mailed to someone that was dreated from a network template - the document will take about 20 seconds to open.

Daf_Loz - I posted points for you earlier this morning...

Daf_Loz - I am terribly sorry. I don't know why I "ignored" your answer. It didn't work when I first tried it, but that is the correct solution to my problem. I should have 50/50'ed it.

Thanks to everyone for participation!

Alexander.

risoy - I split 50/50 with Daf....thanks much

Very honest and good of you. Cheers.

Yes I did indeed.

I'm setting it to run on one or more sub-directories each day. Only trouble is if there is a dialouge box opening with a Word-document - it won't be able to continue... But, we'll live with it. In a couple of weeks now... :-)

Alex.