Powerpoint 2008 still unbearably, unbelievably slow

S

strells

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel At this point, I am so frustrated and fed up with Powerpoint performance, that I want to get rid of it. I would love to use Keynote, OpenOffice, anything, except I'm the only Mac in a Windows XP, Office 2003 environment, and the conversions of my somewhat complex Powerpoint files doesn't work well.

My issues (note I have all the latest patches and updates and I'm using the latest Snow Leopard; I've also tried all fixes I can find, including reinstalling, making sure I don't have multiple installs, and fixing fonts in Font Book):

1) Slow start: Powerpoint takes much longer than usual to even start sometimes. It's not too bad, but it's worse than the other Office apps.

2) Slow quit: OMG, like watching paint dry. I've seen it take over 5 minutes for Powerpoint to quit with only 3 or 4 presentations open, all of which were already saved. Why?

3) Slow "wake from sleep": This must have to do with virtual memory, but it even happens if no other apps are open. If I leave Powerpoint open for any length of time, leave it to do other stuff, and come back to it, say the next day, Powerpoint becomes *interminably* slow. Constant beachballs for pretty much any actions. Only quitting and starting the program again fixes it (but see 1 and 2 above for why this solution sucks). I don't think I have a ton of apps open that would cause the program to do everything from virtual memory, but no other apps I run behave like this! Why?

4) Slow saving: this may have to do with my saving things as .ppt instead of .pptx as mentioned in other posts here, but I have no choice. Office 2003 does not support pptx. I'll see how working with .pptx goes with a final "Save As" .ppt for my colleagues.

Will 2008 ever perform as well as Office 2003 on Windows? I'm hopeful, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe the question should be: when is the next version of Office for Mac coming?
 
T

t_hughes

I share your pain. I just bought a new version of Office 2008 to reinstall and I have what are apparently font conflicts as Office, through its infinite wisdom, thinks it needs to scour my fonts to disable similar fonts so it can replace them with MS versions. I'm a graphic designer and have a lot of fonts that I manage with SUitcase Fusion 2.

It is so frustrating. My Powerpoint has taken 25 minutes to open and it's still not open.

MS, why can't you deal with fonts like any other app?

I hate Office and wish I didn't need to use because I work with so many PC Powerpoint users.
 

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