Typing lag in PowerPoint and a fix (at least for me)

[scottjn]

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

I've noticed often in PowerPoint that there is a tremendous typing lag - typing a character would cause the spinning beach ball to come up and 3-4 seconds would pass before the character would appear on screen. It got so bad, PP was unusable for me and I had to use PP '07 in Parallels. After some trial and error, I found how to produce this and how to avoid it.

How to produce it:
Open PP and open a file using "open recent", which takes forever on my computer with the spinning beach ball popping up for 3-4 seconds. At this point the typing lag will occur. Closing this file (but not quitting PP) and opening it up from the Finder also has the typing lag. Opening a file from the finder and merely going to "open recent" (without actually opening a file) also produces the typing lag.

How to avoid the typing lag:
Open the file from the finder and never go to "open recent".

I hope this helps others, this had been very frustrating to me (I will send this to MS as well).

 

[Pat McMillan]

We are actually aware of this problem and are investigating a fix. You're
correct that it's related to the most recent file list in PPT (it's actually
a core Office component, so it affects Excel too). Your best workaround
until we fix this is to go to PowerPoint preferences (General pane) and
disable the checkbox that says "Track recently opened documents". That
should completely solve the problem.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[scottjn]

Hi Pat,

Thanks for your response. Just so you know, I am not having this problem with Excel, just with PowerPoint.

 

[Tamar Williams]

I Just recently purchased a new mac book book and currently installed office
mac 2008 on my computer. However when I went to access powerpoint it was
incredibly slow and lagging each time I typed. It would talk about 12 seconds
for the words to appear on the screen and it would have the ballon thing that
shows up on the screen to indicate that its processing. Listen honestly I'm
trying my hardest not be upset at this moment but this is a new computer so
its obviously something wrong if the Microsoft's powerpoint software I've
seen post stating you know about this problem ...BUT IS THERE A SOLUTION TO
THE PROBLEM ....I would be grateful if you can tell me where I could go to
get an updated version on the site which doesn't lag b/c I did all my updates
to my office thinking that would solve the problem it did nothing ....Please
help me I need my powerpoint for school and that is the main reason why I
purchased office instead of Iwork