Office 2008: Slow, slow, slow (am I the only one?)

[Doug]

I've been lurking in the Mac Office groups for a few weeks now to see
what people are saying about the new version of Office, specifically
how sluggish it is. Oddly, I'm finding very few posts talking about
this. On my MacBook Pro, the Office apps (even after the last patch
and without any font overload or 3rd-party font manager) load very
slowly, to the point where I'm reluctant to use them. So, I guess the
question I have is: Am I the only one having this problem (or is this
problem just a given)? Thanks.

Doug

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

I've been lurking in the Mac Office groups for a few weeks now to see
what people are saying about the new version of Office, specifically
how sluggish it is. Oddly, I'm finding very few posts talking about
this. On my MacBook Pro, the Office apps (even after the last patch
and without any font overload or 3rd-party font manager) load very
slowly, to the point where I'm reluctant to use them. So, I guess the
question I have is: Am I the only one having this problem (or is this
problem just a given)? Thanks.

Doug

No, you are not the only one having this problem. Some people have reported
that Suitcase may be to blame. Try disabling it. I don't use it, and have
had no trouble with the Office 2008 suite. The load times are tolerable -
less than 5 second for Excel, about 10 seconds for Word. Additionally, All
the 2008 apps seem to be "snappier" for me than 2004.

 

[Doug]

No, you are not the only one having this problem. Some people have reported
that Suitcase may be to blame. Try disabling it. I don't use it, and have
had no trouble with the Office 2008 suite. The load times are tolerable -
less than 5 second for Excel, about 10 seconds for Word. Additionally, All
the 2008 apps seem to be "snappier" for me than 2004.

Bob, I've seen a lot of trouble with Suitcase, but sadly I'm not using
it so that easy fix isn't for me. Excel is the fastest for me as well
at about 10 seconds, but Word takes at a minimum 20 seconds before I
can click on anything (and often, for no apparent reason, it may take
double that time to load). PowerPoint, which was by far the slowest
pre-12.0.1 patch, is now (at best) in the middle of the pack at 15
seconds or so, but it too often takes much, much longer for no reason
that I can discern. The odd thing, for me as a long-time OSX user, is
that Word will take 20+ seconds on the first load, and then if I quit
and reopen, it still takes 20+ seconds to reload. Pages, on the other
hand, like most OSX apps, greatly descreases its load time on re-
launch: about 4 seconds on first load, and about 1 second on reload.
All in all, I'd like Office to get a bit snappier so that I'm more
willing to use it in my day-to-day workflow.

Doug

 

[Diane Ross]

All in all, I'd like Office to get a bit snappier so that I'm more
willing to use it in my day-to-day workflow.

What other users have reported that helped them:

Fix for me was to delete 100% of the Microsoft prefs and the .dotm/Normal
file, then restart. Problem gone.

========
One thing you can do is to disable the "what you see is what you get" font
menus. Go to Entourage > Preferences, and then, under "General
Preferences", click "General" in the left pane. Uncheck the box for
"WYSIWYG font menu". That will disable the preview of what the fonts look
like in the Font menu, but it should appear faster as a result.
==========
Use Linotype FontExplorer X (which is a free download). Do a "Clean System
Fonts Folders" which cleans out any fonts not installed by the Mac OS X
Installation (i.e. ones you install yourself) and puts them in a folder on
your desktop to do with what you want.
================
In my case, bringing up the Activity Viewer had the Word application "Not
Responding", due to an out of control FontAgent Pro. Running "Uninstall
FontAgent Pro" solved the problem, and now the mini is snappy also - about 2
second every time for all the Office Apps.

=============
It sounds like you're running with too little memory for what you're doing.
Which means that in general the situation you're describing IS happening but
not to things you can deal with but with the Virtual Memory system. What you
describe can happen when the memory system is constantly having to unload
from and load into memory from the disk drive.

Have you run Activity Monitor from the Utilities folder? And have you
watched the value for Free when the System Memory tab (at the bottom) is
selected. From what I've seen when this number gets below 50MB the system
will start to slow down. When it gets down to 20MB or 10MB you get what you
call Beachballitis.

They only real cure is to run fewer programs or buy more memory.
============================
John McGhie's tips:

You may wish to try this:

1) Quit all Microsoft applications.

2) Track down all instances of pre-2008 Normal template on your computer,
and drag them to your desktop. The file is called simply "Normal" and has
no extension.

3) Find and drag the file Normal.dotm to your desktop. Unless you have
moved it, it should be in
/Users/ ~ /Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/

4) If the following files exist, Remove or rename them:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (10)

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Word Settings (11)

User/Library/Preferences/com.Microsoft.Word.plist

User/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008 (the whole folder!)

5) Now re-start Word 2008 and it should be OK.

Be thorough with this, if you leave any of these files behind Word 2008 will
find them and won't replace them. Do it right and Word will construct a
new, clean, set of preferences and everything should now work.

 

[Doug]

Diane,

Thanks for all the tips. I've actually tried all of these over the
past few weeks, and none of them seem to substantially decrease load
times (turning off font previews seems to help sometimes, but not
always). The strange thing is that Office seems so inconsistent.
Sometimes, on relaunch, Word will actually load pretty fast (5-7
seconds), other times it will take 20+. It seem like I'll just have to
wait until the next Office patch, or the next OSX point update (10.5.3
is evidently in testing right now), and hope that something gets
fixed. Here's hoping.

Doug

 

[Diane Ross]

The only other thing I can think of right now to check is Virtual Memory.
This might account for why it is speedier at times.

Simply checking how full your drive is does not take in consideration that
the virtual memory system can use considerable space on your drive. When you
run out of RAM, virtual memory allows an operating system to escape the
limitations of physical RAM by using hard disk storage to hold data not
currently in use. This hard disk storage is sometimes called the ³swap²
space because of its use as storage for data being swapping in and out of
memory. Using "swap" space can significantly slow down your Mac.

For more info on Virtual Memory see: Problems from Insufficient RAM and Free
Hard Disk Space

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq_topic/performance2.html>


TIP: To help performance, add your Identities folder to Spotlight Exclude
list. See this page for more tips to help performance.

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/performance.html#options_perform
ance>

 

[carl Aspler]

I also have this problem. I mainly use Powerpoint, and it seems to take forever for it to go through the autosave "thermometer", and same for something called "convert". This is a complete new install of Office 2008 on a brand new fully loaded MacBook Pro. It is also quitting when i try to click on the outline view.

Advice?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Advice 1: don't add a problem with using PPT to a thread about Office
apps being slow to launch, because hijacking threads like that just
means you confuse the issue.

Advice 2: go ask in the PPT forum.

 

[usenet.gs]

Advice 3: inform Mitchell that Powerpoint is a part of the Office
suite, and that Aspler's post was entirely pertinent to this
conversation discussing Office apps being slow.

Anyways, I also noticed that ridiculously slow save time in Powerpoint
(anywhere from 5-10s, depending on the file). Even worse, Powerpoint
pops up a window during an autosave, not only distracting you but even
preventing you from doing anything during the save.

In addition, launch times have not improved over Office 2004.

Good times.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Again, you are more likely to get help from the people in the PPT forum
who use it frequently, and they are not reading this forum. Can you ask
questions about slow PPT in this thread? Certainly. Is that the best
way to get quick, accurate help? Not really.

But you don't really sound like you want help anyhow, just to complain.

 

[Ricardo]

Hi. I have the same problem (high times of response) using office 2004. I increased memory improving performance a little bit. Could it be possible that one of the updates cause this problem?

 

[:zaf:]

Hi all, after upgrading from Office 2004 I just feel Office 2008 is quite ridiculous. Going to explain: I'm on a dual-core Intel 1.5Gb RAM white iMac: how can such a machine be unable to follow my quite low typing rate? That is: in Word or PowerPoint, I type, then raise my eyes to find I'm at word 20, while the spftware is still writing word 2 or 3!!! Anything connected with graphic elements is really slow: moving photos, resizing a box... everything causes spinning balls, delays, incredible lags (5 to 10 seconds even for mouse pointer to change from "arrow" to whatever else and back)... I DON'T use font-managers, so I don't understand how can it be so. Please, don't advice me saying "buy more ram": 1.5 Gb is enough to work on a 20MP 32bit PSD file, don't tell me Word has not enough to manage two photos and some characters ;-)
What does Office 2008 expect me to do to have it working properly?

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Hi all, after upgrading from Office 2004 I just feel Office 2008 is quite
ridiculous. Going to explain: I'm on a dual-core Intel 1.5Gb RAM white iMac:
how can such a machine be unable to follow my quite low typing rate? That is:
in Word or PowerPoint, I type, then raise my eyes to find I'm at word 20,
while the spftware is still writing word 2 or 3!!! Anything connected with
graphic elements is really slow: moving photos, resizing a box... everything
causes spinning balls, delays, incredible lags (5 to 10 seconds even for mouse
pointer to change from "arrow" to whatever else and back)... I DON'T use
font-managers, so I don't understand how can it be so. Please, don't advice me
saying "buy more ram": 1.5 Gb is enough to work on a 20MP 32bit PSD file,
don't tell me Word has not enough to manage two photos and some characters ;-)
What does Office 2008 expect me to do to have it working properly?

Well, I won't tell you to buy more RAM. But Apple recommends 1.5G for
Leopard, and suggests 2. Microsoft suggests 512 for Office 2008. I interpret
that to mean above what is needed by the OS. So your 1.5G is less than what
is optimal. What happens if you access Office from another new "empty" user
account?

 

[Diane Ross]

This is not acceptable and not all users are experiencing this type of
behavior. Even on my G4 Dual 1.42 GHZ, Memory 2GB, Mac OS X 10.5.3 I didn't
see this type of behavior.

On my iMac 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo, 2GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.5.3 I am not seeing
this behavior either.

Well, I won't tell you to buy more RAM. But Apple recommends 1.5G for
Leopard, and suggests 2. Microsoft suggests 512 for Office 2008. I interpret
that to mean above what is needed by the OS. So your 1.5G is less than what
is optimal. What happens if you access Office from another new "empty" user
account?

See ways to test if you need more RAM. See your pageins/outs.

Pageins or pageouts are how many times a page of memory is swapped out from
disk to memory and vice versa. If the total pageouts is low compared to the
number of pageins after having used your Mac for hours of work, you may have
sufficient RAM. Otherwise, you should install more RAM.

Problems from insufficient RAM and free hard disk space
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq_topic/performance2.html>

 

[John McGhie]

Whatever is wrong, this is not a problem with the Word application. Word
2008 is quite snappy, even on an older iMac.

You have probably mangled that document, but we'll get to investigating that
in a moment.

First, go to Word>About Word and give us the top three black lines. We need
your software version information and build number.

Now start Activity Monitor utility, and give us the numbers from the CPU,
System Memory, Disk Activity, and Disk Usage tabs at the bottom.

Then look in the Process pane and find the Microsoft Word entry and give us
all the numbers from that line.

Then we'll be able to tell you what the problem is.

If it's the document, chances are you will be able to fix it with a Maggie:

The Maggie:

1. Create a new blank document
2. Carefully select all of the text in the bad document EXCEPT the last
paragraph mark
3. Copy it.
4. Paste in the new document.
5. Save under a new file name and close all, then re-open.

This technique for de-corrupting is known as "Doing a 'Maggie'", after
Margaret Secara from the Word PC-L mailing list who first publicised the
technique.


Cheers

Hi all, after upgrading from Office 2004 I just feel Office 2008 is quite
ridiculous. Going to explain: I'm on a dual-core Intel 1.5Gb RAM white iMac:
how can such a machine be unable to follow my quite low typing rate? That is:
in Word or PowerPoint, I type, then raise my eyes to find I'm at word 20,
while the spftware is still writing word 2 or 3!!! Anything connected with
graphic elements is really slow: moving photos, resizing a box... everything
causes spinning balls, delays, incredible lags (5 to 10 seconds even for mouse
pointer to change from "arrow" to whatever else and back)... I DON'T use
font-managers, so I don't understand how can it be so. Please, don't advice me
saying "buy more ram": 1.5 Gb is enough to work on a 20MP 32bit PSD file,
don't tell me Word has not enough to manage two photos and some characters ;-)
What does Office 2008 expect me to do to have it working properly?

--

Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]