Optimizing font menu performance...

[Thomas G. Madsen]

Hi,

At work we use Office 2004 for OS X (10.3.8) with all updates and
patches applied but on every single workstation (we have about 10
of them), applications like Word, Excel and Powerpoint takes an
eternity to start.

We have FontAgent Pro installed <http://www.insidersoftware.com/>.
Maybe that's the reason but is there no way to avoid the
optimization of the font menu during startup of those applications?
(Turning off the WYSIWYG font and style menus helps a little, but
not enough).

 

[Thomas G. Madsen]

(Turning off the WYSIWYG font and style menus helps a little,
but not enough).

And cleaning out the font cache doesn't work either. We use
Deep Six quite often.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

(Turning off the WYSIWYG font and style menus helps a little,

And cleaning out the font cache doesn't work either. We use
Deep Six quite often.

Have you tested whether it really is Font Agent Pro causing the problem? If
it happens without it being installed, there should be something that can be
done (as Word/XL open in 3-4 secs for me).

Also, how many fonts do you have installed?

 

[Thomas G. Madsen]

Have you tested whether it really is Font Agent Pro causing
the problem?

No because working without a font manager is not really an
option for us. We need a font manager and FontAgent Pro is
the best we can find for OS X at the moment.

I'll try without FontAgent on my home machine in the following
weekend, because it has the same problem.

Also, how many fonts do you have installed?

Around 50 to 100 activated fonts, but it varies (We produce
newspapers so we have and need quite a lot of fonts).

 

[js]

Is it a client server LAN? Were user have their settings in their home
on a server?
I got that problem when there are different sets of fonts on different
computers.

/J Schmidt

 

[Thomas G. Madsen]

Is it a client server LAN?

No. Each client computer has its own set of fonts installed and
each client computer has Font Agent Pro installed to manage them.

It doesn't seem to change anything without Font Agent Pro by the
way. I tried this weekend, but it still takes several minutes
to start Word and Excel the first time after a restart of OS X
because it has to rebuild that freaking font menu. It's driving
me nuts.

I have removed the fonts installed by Office because we don't
want them in our workflow (we only use Type 1 fonts and a few
system dfonts, that unfortunately can't be deleted).
First I thought that this could be the reason for the long font
menu optimization, but it doesn't work to copy the Office fonts
back either.

 

[pks]

I have been able to considerably reduce launch time and font menu
clutter as follows:
1. I remove all of the fonts that are included in the Office install.
They are placed in a subfolder marked "fonts" somewhere within the
"Microsoft Office" folder or one of its subfolders--I forget exactly
where.
2. I remove all references to those fonts in any of the word templates
that I might call-up intentionally or by accident, especially the
"normal" template. This means changing all fonts specified in the
styles. For my purposes it has been easiest to change them all to Times
or Minion. If you sometimes use web fonts like Verdanna, I would create
a specific template for use when they are needed.

3. I remove any references to "Helvetica Fractions". Because they
always seem to cause conflicts in all versions of system X, they are to
be available only when absolutely needed.

All of these steps may be required. Insidiously, any references to
these fonts in any active template will cause FontAgent, or, I
presume, any other font management tool with autoactiviation to
activate them, thwarting one's best efforts.

By removing them I have been able to reduce launch to about 8 seconds.

 

[Thomas G. Madsen]

1. I remove all of the fonts that are included in the Office
install.

I have already done that.

2. I remove all references to those fonts in any of the word
templates that I might call-up intentionally or by accident,
especially the "normal" template.

The only thing we use Word for is when we receive Word documents
from our clients that can't be pasted directly into Adobe InDesign
CS because some odd Word-feature is used. We then use word to get
an idea about how the ad should look like (we produce newspapers).

Is it possible to delete all the templates so that Word doesn't
load them?

3. I remove any references to "Helvetica Fractions". Because
they always seem to cause conflicts in all versions of system X,
they are to be available only when absolutely needed.

As far as I remember, we do indeed have Helvetica Fractions in
our font collection, but I'm not sure.

All of these steps may be required. Insidiously, any references
to these fonts in any active template will cause FontAgent, or,
I presume, any other font management tool with autoactiviation
to activate them, thwarting one's best efforts.

At first FontAgent activated three or four fonts every time Word
was started. I don't recall which fonts exactly but Times New
Roman was one of them. I thought that this was the reason for
the slow start-up, so I placed those three or four fonts in
a start-up folder in FontAgent, so that those fonts are always
loaded at system start-up. Unfortunately it didn't change much.
Word (and Excel) still takes several minutes to start.

By removing them I have been able to reduce launch to about 8
seconds.

I wish that it would launch in about 8 seconds here.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Is it possible to delete all the templates so that Word doesn't

load them?

I think you should just be able to drag them out of the apps/ms office
2004/templates folder. Quit Word first, hide them somewhere in case you
ever want them.

Sorry not to be more help with the rest of the issues.

 

[Thomas G. Madsen]

I think you should just be able to drag them out of the apps/ms
office 2004/templates folder.

It seems that you're right. I haven't tested if it actually
shortens the start-up time yet, but I'll definitely give it a
try.

Sorry not to be more help with the rest of the issues.

No need to be sorry. Thanks for you help, Daiya