Excel 2008: Slow typing when using Parallels

[bgstults]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I'm trying to keep this topic alive, in the hopes that we can figure out a solution.

I and several others have experienced a performance problem when using Excel 2008 with Parallels + Windows XP Pro (SP2/SP3). (All updates of all pieces of software have been installed).

When Parallels is open and active, typing in cells in Excel -- even in a blank spreadsheet -- is extremely slow. There is a lag of several seconds between keystrokes and when the text appears on screen, and keystrokes are often lost as well. I do not experience this problem or behavior in Word 2008 or PowerPoint 2008.

I have experienced this on MacBooks and MacBook Pros, including with up to 4GB of RAM. There are no other abnormal background processes going on, and the problem is conclusively not disk scans. The only thing I even use on the Windows side is Outlook, and the only third-party program even installed there is Office 2003.

* Pausing* the virtual machine in Parallels restores Excel to its normal snappiness.
* I can temporarily solve the problem by trashing the specific preference file com.microsoft.office.plist. This makes Excel seem snappy for a while...but the sluggishness eventually returns.
* Replicating the identical virtual environment in VMWare, performance is normal.
* As some users have noted, the problems are not ubiquitous, and other users with similar configurations have not observed the problem.

Previous threads -- both here and over at Parallels -- have included:
* <http://www.officeformac.com/ProductForums/Excel/2375>
* <http://www.officeformac.com/ProductForums/Excel/884>
* <http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=19859>

 

[Pat McMillan]

Thanks for keeping this alive. We are continuing to look into this on our
end, but like the Parallels guys, we've been unable to reproduce it so far.
We'll try simulating your exact configuration and see if we have better luck
this time.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Pat McMillan]

Well, thanks to bgstults' post, we took a look at this again today and did
make some progress on understanding this problem. Here's what we've found so
far:

If you have file sharing on and then open any file from the Windows share,
that file is added to Excel's recent file list (under File/Open Recent). As
soon as any file from the Windows share is in the recent file list, the
typing delay starts to happen, regardless if the file you're opening resides
locally or not and regardless of whether the file has been saved or not.

If, on the other hand, Excel's recent file list does not contain a file from
the Windows share, the problem doesn't happen.

This would explain why trashing the Office preferences file
(com.microsoft.office.plist) makes the problem go away, because that
preferences file stores the list of recently used files in Excel.

At this point, we're not sure if this is a problem in Excel or a problem in
Parallels. But until we figure that out and the problem gets fixed, you
should be able to workaround the problem by either choosing "Clear Recent"
From the File/Open Recent menu in Excel when you encounter the problem or
turning off the recent files list entirely by going to Excel/Preferences...
General and disabling the checkbox that says "Show this number of recent
documents:".

Thanks again to bgstults for being persistent with this! Hopefully with this
information we'll be able to figure out who should fix this and then get it
fixed in a future update.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[bgstults]

Fantastic!!! I am glad to hear we have a lead on this!

I've disabled for now the recent files functionality in Excel, and will work with that for the next day or so. With a little luck, it'll be flawless.

Thanks for continuing to look into this!

 

[Pat McMillan]

Thank you! Without your persistence it would certainly have taken us longer
to figure this out. Let us know how the workaround goes.

Pat

 

[John@P]

Pat McMillan
Probably the best way to check , is to have a file in the recent list opened from network share

 

[bgstults]

After a day of testing (i.e., turning "Recent Files" off in Excel), it definitely looks like you're on the right track. I haven't had any slowdowns whatsoever in data entry.

Please let me know (or post here) if there's anything else I can do to troubleshoot or help.

 

[Pat McMillan]

Thanks for the follow up. That's good to hear. We are investigating this now
to see if we can get to the bottom of it. The main thing that would be
useful at this point is if anyone encounters this typing delay in Excel 2008
who is *not* using Parallels, and to let us know what happens if you clear
your Recent file list, disable Recent Files altogether, or delete the
com.microsoft.Office.plist file.

Thanks again,

Pat

 

[Bijan Kafi]

Just to add my 2 cents.

I believe this problem is unrelated to Parallels. I have had extremely laggy data entry in Excel 2008 now for months in all kinds of files large and small. Even though I do have Parallels I usually never run it at the same time.

However, I do open files from Windows-based network shares and the workaround mentioned here did indeed also solve my problem.

 

[Carolyn Taylor]

This is so great! Like the previous post, I have had a longstanding problem with slow typing in Excel to the point of making it essentially useless. I tried trashing preferences as suggested, but the problem always returned after a short period of use. I too am on a network that using a Windows server and many of the Excel files I used are on the server. Turning off the recent file preferences after the slow typing problem started, caused Excel to hang and I had to force quit. But after restarting then turning off the preference before the problem started, everything now appears to be OK. Hopefully you guys can figure out the basis for the problem, since have a recent file list is very handy, but at least now the program can be used.

Now if only someone would figure out how to make the checkboxes appear in my printed Excel forms, I can finally delete Office 2004 from my machine.

 

[Pat McMillan]

Thanks. We're also really glad to finally be to the bottom of this slow
typing issue. We're investigating the problem now to make sure we understand
why this is happening. Once we understand that we'll do our best to get a
fix out quickly.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

This is so great! Like the previous post, I have had a longstanding problem
with slow typing in Excel to the point of making it essentially useless. I
tried trashing preferences as suggested, but the problem always returned after
a short period of use. I too am on a network that using a Windows server and
many of the Excel files I used are on the server. Turning off the recent file
preferences after the slow typing problem started, caused Excel to hang and I
had to force quit. But after restarting then turning off the preference before
the problem started, everything now appears to be OK. Hopefully you guys can
figure out the basis for the problem, since have a recent file list is very
handy, but at least now the program can be used.

Now if only someone would figure out how to make the checkboxes appear in my
printed Excel forms, I can finally delete Office 2004 from my machine.

Have you selected the check box, gone to Format control and checked the
print option in the properties box? If this isn't the problem, please
explain how you added the check box and what the printed output looks like.

 

[Carolyn Taylor]

This is a longstanding problem experienced by many users. I have been monitoring this forum for some time looking for a solution. The answer to your question is yes, the check box properties are set to "print object". The checkboxes appear onscreen but do not show up when printed to paper or when printed to a pdf file. I would be happy to provide documentation by email of an example form.

 

[Pat McMillan]

I'm also noticing an increasing number of these reports. We are tracking
this and will hopefully be able to address it in a future update.

 

[Quenton Fyfe]

Many thanks to everyone who's helped to find a solution to this annoying problem.

I've had this problem for months - and it's made Excel very frustrating to use (to the point where I started using Excel 2000 under Parallels instead).

I'm not certain that it's related to Parallels though - I do have parallels installed, but the problem happened whether Parallels is running or not.

I do have Windows shares that I connect to though - and I knew the problem was network related, but couldn't figure out exactly how.

I've now disabled "recent files" in Excel, and based on a few minutes testing - it's fixed the problem. Fingers crossed!

 

[Simon]

I'm not using Parallels, but found this thread looking for a solution to Excel 2008 being ridiculously slow. I went back to Excel 2004, but that didn't help when working on XML format files.

I came across the "delete the plist file" solution on another forum, but the problem kept returning. Unchecking the "show the number of recent files" in Excel preferences magically restored full speed, even without restarting Excel. Thanks for this, but it doesn't look like it's a Parallels problem.

 

[Pat McMillan]

Thank you. We know this isn't just a Parallels problem now, and is related
to Office's most recent file code. We're investigating the problem now.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Steve Wood]

I had several users here that were experiencing the lag in typing. I disabled the "Show the number of recent files" and all is fine now.

Thanks for the trick!

Steve

 

[Olivier]

I've had stop using Excel 2008 until today! I was hoping at every single patch that the problem would be fixed, and after a few hours, would come back. I noticed that opening the "Recent files" menu took a long while... but did not make the connection to disabling it. Also opening the "Help" menu used to take a long while displaying the spinning wheel. You're on the right track guys! Keep up the good work!

 

[Olivier]

BTW, I have had similar issues with Word (that is slow when switching between different word docs), and removing the recently used docs (from prefs) made it much faster, as one would expect. So the code is most likely shared and called at various moments in time and when windows shared are used (which is probably the case of many Mac users out there in a Windows world), things are slow... i guess same applies to Powerpoint...