HarkinsIT
asked on
Opening Office documents is very slow
Ever since upgrading our company from Office 2003 to Office 2007, a few users have said that it generally seems slower, but I have one in particular that is saying that he considers the slowdown "unacceptable" and after looking at his machine, I would have to agree. The problem is with opening documents and it happens in both Excel and Word. Before the update, a document would open in about 3 to 5 seconds. Now, opening any Excel or Word document (xls, xlsx, doc and docx) takes between 15 and 30 seconds. So far, this is what I have done to attempt to resolve his issue:
- Uninstalled all unnecessary programs.
- Defrgmented the hard drive.
- Ran anti virus/anti spyware scan.
- Went into file types in Explorer, located xls and doc and changed their "open" property to include "%1" at the end of the path. (This has made a pretty big difference for other complaining users.)
- Turned off all add-ins in Excel and Word. (There were only 2)
Now here's where the problem gets weird. This particular user was working at a different site, away from him usual office, the other day and he said everything was working great. Documents were running at a normal speed and he was happy. He thought everything was groovy until he came back to his regular office this morning and his troubles returned. Just for kicks, I had him unplug his network cable and reboot and see how things ran. They ran great until he plugged back in to the network.
The difference between the different site office and his main office is that the main office has a VPN connection to our headquarters. I figured that Office had to be phoning home for some reason every time he opened a document, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it's doing. Is there anyone out there that can maybe tell me whats going on here or perhaps a way to troubleshoot this issue? I would be most greateful if someone could help me get this user off my back. He can be a bit pestersome.
Oh yeah, all of his documents are located on his C drive and he is running Windows XP. Thanks!
-Chris
- Uninstalled all unnecessary programs.
- Defrgmented the hard drive.
- Ran anti virus/anti spyware scan.
- Went into file types in Explorer, located xls and doc and changed their "open" property to include "%1" at the end of the path. (This has made a pretty big difference for other complaining users.)
- Turned off all add-ins in Excel and Word. (There were only 2)
Now here's where the problem gets weird. This particular user was working at a different site, away from him usual office, the other day and he said everything was working great. Documents were running at a normal speed and he was happy. He thought everything was groovy until he came back to his regular office this morning and his troubles returned. Just for kicks, I had him unplug his network cable and reboot and see how things ran. They ran great until he plugged back in to the network.
The difference between the different site office and his main office is that the main office has a VPN connection to our headquarters. I figured that Office had to be phoning home for some reason every time he opened a document, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it's doing. Is there anyone out there that can maybe tell me whats going on here or perhaps a way to troubleshoot this issue? I would be most greateful if someone could help me get this user off my back. He can be a bit pestersome.
Oh yeah, all of his documents are located on his C drive and he is running Windows XP. Thanks!
-Chris
ASKER
Yeah, I didn't think about the mapped drives/network printers thing. I have seen similar stuff like that before. I was pretty excited when I found that he did indeed have a network drive pointing to a non-existent location, but disconnecting it did not make a difference. I also looked through his printers and all of them are online and accessible from the office where he is now.
Not sure about the normal.dot. How do I verify that one?
Thanks for the help.
-Chris
Not sure about the normal.dot. How do I verify that one?
Thanks for the help.
-Chris
HarkinsIT said:
>>Not sure about the normal.dot. How do I verify that one?
Have your user launch Word, then hit Alt+F11 to get to the VB Editor. In the Immediate Window,
have the user type this and hit return:
?templates("normal.dot").p
The result should be something like:
C:\Documents and Settings\<windows login name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates
>>Not sure about the normal.dot. How do I verify that one?
Have your user launch Word, then hit Alt+F11 to get to the VB Editor. In the Immediate Window,
have the user type this and hit return:
?templates("normal.dot").p
The result should be something like:
C:\Documents and Settings\<windows login name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates
ASKER
Yeah, the normal.dot file is pointing the default location on the C drive. Not sure what else to look at here. Anyone else have any ideas?
Thanks
Thanks
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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HarkinsIT,
Be sure to post a Q in Community Support saying that you answered your own question and would
like a points refund :)
Regards,
Patrick
Be sure to post a Q in Community Support saying that you answered your own question and would
like a points refund :)
Regards,
Patrick
Sometimes the behavior you're seeing can be caused by mapped network drives no longer
being valid, or ditto for network printers. Also, double-check that they are using a Normal.dot
local to the machine, or on a network share somewhere...
Patrick