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I put my money on Symantec. Modern Office file formats are ZIP files, which might get checked by Symantec, causing significant delays. Sadly you might not be able to perform a simple test, because Symantec AV is known well for sitting deep in the system, so just disabling checks might not be sufficient. What you can for test is save an Office file as new file in old format, e.g. XLS instead of XLSX, and see if that opens fast.<br />
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If you want to put effort in investigating (and do some forensic work), you can use SysInternals ProcMon with a filter of &quot;path&quot;, &quot;contains&quot;, and the file name to monitor, then try to open the (original) file. If I'm correct you'll see the AV process of Symantec involved.
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I've seen one specific scenario where the behavior is very much like the issue you described (don't know if it applies to you or not):<br />
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Affected computer was a laptop. &nbsp;User had default printer set to their home printer, which of course could not be reached while this person was at the office. &nbsp;Office files were really slow to open, because computer (MS Office, actually) was trying to communicate with the default printer before opening the file. &nbsp;In that particular case, removing that default printer made the problem go away.
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I asked this question before, and after cleaning up the system in question, thought I had stumbled across the solution. &nbsp;No luck<br />
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Office 2013, Win 7 Pro, 2008 Server SMB &nbsp;simple File Shares (one user), Symantec Enterprise Edition<br />
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Word and Excel Files occasionally take FOREVER to open (minutes, not seconds)<br />
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PDF files never have this issue. &nbsp;<br />
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these account for the vast bulk (99%) of the file types this user accesses.
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I asked this question before, and after cleaning up the system in question, thought I had stumbled across the solution.  No luck

Office 2013, Win 7 Pro, 2008 Server SMB  simple File Shares (one user), Symantec Enterprise Edition

Word and Excel Files occasionally take FOREVER to open (minutes, not seconds)

PDF files never have this issue.  

these account for the vast bulk (99%) of the file types this user accesses.

Extreme long load times for Office Files

Microsoft Office is an integrated suite of applications that includes Outlook, Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Visio and InfoPath, along with a number of tools to assist in making the individual components work together. Coding within and between the projects is done in Visual Basic for Applications, known as VBA.