Microsoft Word file or Microsoft Excel file takes a long time to open
Posted by: bruntech in Microsoft Office, tags: Microsoft OfficeIssue: Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel documents and or spreadsheets take a long time to open when you click on a word or excel file.
NOTE: This refers to XP only. The functionality of editing file types manually has been removed in Vista.
However, if you open Word or Excel, they both open normally.
Why is this happening? DDE may be broken for either Word or Excel.
Possible Resolutions:
Remember this is for ONLY when you double-click on a Word or Excel file and it takes a long time to open.
Solution 1.) If you have installed PDF maker, which can get installed when you install scanner software, the Excel add-on can potentially cause Excel to open slowly. This is more common in Office 2007.
- Close Excel and any other window you have open
- Open "My Computer" and browse to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\XLSTART
- When you open Excel, check to see if the time it takes to open the xls/xlsx is shortened.
Solution 2.) This can be fixed by reinstalling Office but there is a faster way to fix this .
- Go to your Control Panel, (click on Start then Click on Control Panel)
- Click on Folder Options, then File Types,
- scroll down to and select (DOC for Word files) or XLS (for Excel files),
- click Advanced and select Open entry,
- click the edit Button.
- deselect "Use DDE"
- append "%1" (include the quote marks) to the end of the application command line,
- Remove /dde if it is at the end of the command line
- Then click on OK three times.
If the issue was being caused by DDE, then when you now open a Word doc file or Excel els; they will now open faster, without a long pause.
Entries (RSS)
Thanks - this has been irritating me for a while and the DDE fix worked.
I have a couple of often-used files, one for passwords and usernames, the other a large work log. I had assumed the files had somehow got corrupted or inefficient because they were both frequently altered. Both files have shortcuts on my Start menu.
The fix worked for me too.
Don’t forget the quote marks round “%1″! I did!
Many thanks,
Nick
tags: Microsoft Office 2003, Word document opens slowly when clicking shortcut
Thanks…great trick….it worked for me as well….. Don’t forget the “%1″ on the end of the command line… I forgot first, then i edited again….and walah! Very fast opening of excel file…….
tony
Thanks a lot for this post. It was a really REALLY big help. I am on the verge of punching my pc every time i try and open word or xl.
Your solution worked like a charm.
Thanks again….
Great post - thank you !
I could not figure out why changing directories on “Save As” in Word 2003 takes so much time (more than 15 seconds on each dir change). The removal of the DDE connection saved my sanity.
tags: slow directory change Office Word 2003
This worked like a charm until I restarted the computer. It didn’t seem to save my settings. When I go back in, I see that “Use DDE” is checked again. Weird! Any ideas?
This suggestion solved my problem of Word 2003 not opening the document at all: I was finding that double-clicking a Word document in Windows Explorer or as an Outlook attachment caused the Word application to open, but without the document I’d just clicked (either with a blank doc, or no doc at all). When opening an Outlook attachment, I also got an error message in Outlook saying “The system could not find the specified file”.
However, I since discovered a suggestion at this site to run the “unregserver” and then “regserver” command to unregister and re-register references to Word in the registry, which also solved my problem, without removing the DDE connection.
I also found that Word was still opening files very slowly. The reason for this turned out to be because I had a shared printer as the default printer: in particular, when the computer hosting the shared printer was turned off, this caused Word to open documents very slowly. Setting a (non-existent) local printer to be the default solved this problem too.
I have problem with Windows XP Pro. My company use Ghost to image desktops and laptops. I habve one particular laptop that no matter what is giving me this problem. After startingWord or Excel, I click on File Open and it takes apprx 2 min to open. If I unplug netwotk cable and PC looses connection to network it opens the “File Open” dilaog box immeduately. Same scenario happens with “File Save as” I have to unplug it from the network and save stuff locally.
I have the latest pathes and there is no virus on my PC. It’s a brand new image. Other PC build from same image work fine and there is no problem with the image. Once I save file as, than I can save it with out any problems.
On the netwotwork take long time to Open or Save AS, as soon as I unplog that pc dialog box comes up.
Don’t tell me about corrupt DLL or normal.dot. Or that I should try OpenOffice instead.
Henry
Dear Henry, Things to look for when having this issue. Do you have an invalid printer mapped or are you mapping to a printer that is slow, like a shared printer on a pc not a server. Also take a look are your shared folders… Are they invalid?
Some people redirect their My Document folder to a shared network drive. Is the drive valid?
You did a good job by pin pointing the issue to the fact when disconnecting your network cable Office documents opend fine… With that in mind I would target anything that is network related to find the culprit, network printer, shares and shortcuts like “My Documents”.
Let use know how you made out…
Thank you for the fix, but my problem has only been partially solved; i use office 2007, and now after this dde fix the computer has stopped hanging but when i open any document a blank document shows up. i still have to go to the file->open menu to open my files….any suggestions?
arv
Problem fixed…needs a space between the command line and the “%1″ :)