Why is Entourage cursor movement sooo slooow

[Bruce sbc 88]

Hi,

I have Entourage 2004, version 11.1.0 (040913) that is, with first update
Mac = iMac FP 1GHz, 1MB RAM, OS X 10.3.7

Ever since I upgraded from Office/Entourage v.X to Office version 2004,
the cursor movement in every email text body is horribly slow.
It is So slow that each time I have to create and edit an email I promise
myself I am going to remove and throw away Office 2004!, and go back to
using Office v.X.

None of the other Office 2004 apps have slow cursor movement -- Word
cursor and key repeat is OK (though not as fast as on a PC... 8^( ).
All my other Mac applications have fast cursor movement.

I have set and reset the mouse and key repeat in System Preferences. This
usually has no effect, because it is already set to fastest.
I have tried with and without USB OverDrive active (USB OD now at v
10.3.9), which is also set to a fast cursor and key repeat rate. But this
has no effect -- and all my other apps work fine with USB OverDrive.

The key repeat is decent, I would guess about 80% as fast as in all other
apps.

I have tried removing Office 2004 and re-installing. I do regular
permission repairs. And regular cache cleanings (via AppleJack, CacheOut,
and TinkerToolSystem). And regular disk maintenance. And reboots. Nothing
helps.

So It seems a very specific cursor movement bug, related just to the
text/body portion of Entourage 2004, not the other Office apps, and the 11.1
update did not address the sloooooowww cursor movement.

PLEASE HELP BEFORE I DELETE ENTOURAGE 2004.

Thank you for listening,

Bruce Young

 

[matt neuburg]

Hi,

I have Entourage 2004, version 11.1.0 (040913) that is, with first update
Mac = iMac FP 1GHz, 1MB RAM, OS X 10.3.7

Ever since I upgraded from Office/Entourage v.X to Office version 2004,
the cursor movement in every email text body is horribly slow.
It is So slow that each time I have to create and edit an email I promise
myself I am going to remove and throw away Office 2004!, and go back to
using Office v.X.

None of the other Office 2004 apps have slow cursor movement -- Word
cursor and key repeat is OK (though not as fast as on a PC... 8^( ).
All my other Mac applications have fast cursor movement.

I have set and reset the mouse and key repeat in System Preferences. This
usually has no effect, because it is already set to fastest.
I have tried with and without USB OverDrive active (USB OD now at v
10.3.9), which is also set to a fast cursor and key repeat rate. But this
has no effect -- and all my other apps work fine with USB OverDrive.

The key repeat is decent, I would guess about 80% as fast as in all other
apps.

I have tried removing Office 2004 and re-installing. I do regular
permission repairs. And regular cache cleanings (via AppleJack, CacheOut,
and TinkerToolSystem). And regular disk maintenance. And reboots. Nothing
helps.

So It seems a very specific cursor movement bug, related just to the
text/body portion of Entourage 2004, not the other Office apps, and the 11.1
update did not address the sloooooowww cursor movement.

PLEASE HELP BEFORE I DELETE ENTOURAGE 2004.

It isn't clear what the phrase "cursor movement" refers to. That's
unfortunately, since it evidently lies at the heart of the issue. Are
you speaking of a special case of the general fact that Entourage
sometimes responds slowly to presses of the keyboard? if so, that point
has indeed been raised; here's a (very long, sorry) URL for an archive
search that turns up a lot of examples of this discussion:

<http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=typing+slow+group:microsoft.publ
ic.mac.office.entourage&start=0&scoring=d&num=10&hl=en&lr=&as_drrb=q&as_
mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=22&as_maxm=5&as_maxy=2005&safe=off
&>

Is that the sort of thing you mean? m.

 

[Bruce sbc 88]

Thanks for quick reply Matt.

I looked at the search, and most do not seem to apply. Though it is a good
collection that seem to hit close... Based on those issues, I can list what
I am experiencing, and what does not seem to apply as well.

What it is: slow arrow cursor movement.
That is, when I press the keyboard arrow keys (left right up down) to move
the cursor -- this is on a stock, Apple extended keyboard, came with the
iMac 17FP.
Left and right arrow key movement is slow and jerky. Up and down arrow key
is almost as slow and somewhat jerky too. On closer examination, the
jerkiness is because the arrow cursor (sort of like an i-bar or
vertical-bar) moves slowly when it is traveling through characters, but
jumps more quickly when it is moving through spaces.

It is not: type-ahead issue. That is, I can type as fast as I am able, and
all letters show up ok. I can press and hold a key, and the key displays
and repeats quickly. So that is fine.

I do NOT have check-spelling-as-type on, it is off.
I am on a DSL link, and I only do manual checking of my email, using the
Send and Receive button, so that is not it. I do not have any sync features
or programs enabled (that I know of). This is a single stand-alone Mac, with
one regular DSL line connection to the net.

And as I mentioned, all other programs (including other MS Office 2004)
respond to keyboard arrow keys with fast on-screen cursor movement.
The only thing that keeps me sane on this issue in Entourage is when I use
Cmd or Option Arrow key, to make the cursor jump to next word. That is
somewhat decent.

I like to be able to use the arrow keys when I create, edit, format email
because the are supposed to be way faster than picking up the mouse and
repositioning it. But the arrow cursor movement keys are what's driving me
buggy.

This happens even when Entourage is about the only program running, so it is
not a memory or swap file issue -- I have 1 GB (Gigabyte) RAM (= 1024MB),
(not 1 MB as I incorrectly indicated).

I currently have NO unsanity brand haxies installed (save for the micro
haxie that I think gets loaded with my Default Folder X program). I am
up-to-date on most all my programs (esp. The registered shareware, like DFX,
DragThing, etc) so I don't think it is that. And 10.3.7 is pretty recent
OS.

I do not get the spinning wheel nor spinning beach ball in Entourage. The
program is running and working, just slow arrow cursor movement.

I do not have a 'pdfmaker' program that one of the posts refers. Manual
check of email only. No current antivirus program (shocking - I was too
pissed that Intego wanted about 80% of original purchase price for me just
to upgrade for their Panther capable version!!!)
Cursor movement is slow all the time, it has never been acceptable in the
Entourage 2004.

Locations where slow cursor movement is apparent: Subject line, text
message body. It is slow whether the email is my outbound or an inbound. It
is slow cursor whether the email is text or html. It is slow cursor whether
the email body is in the preview pane and when it is in its own individual
window.

I hope this helps to clarify. I do like (most of) the folder organizational
and message status features in Entourage. But this cursor movement thing is
so distracting that I keep meaning to switch over to either v.X or to using
Apple Mail or Gayaz Mail or something that responds as if it was a computer,
rather than molasses...

Thank you for your help. Really! I had about given up, since my search of
the MS Mactopia Q-A articles turned up nothing.


--
Warm regards and blessings,

- Bruce Young
~ ~ ~
Think on Peace and Harmony
~ ~ ~

 

[matt neuburg]

What it is: slow arrow cursor movement.
That is, when I press the keyboard arrow keys (left right up down) to move
the cursor -- this is on a stock, Apple extended keyboard, came with the
iMac 17FP.
Left and right arrow key movement is slow and jerky. Up and down arrow key
is almost as slow and somewhat jerky too. On closer examination, the
jerkiness is because the arrow cursor (sort of like an i-bar or
vertical-bar) moves slowly when it is traveling through characters, but
jumps more quickly when it is moving through spaces.

Excellent - that's very clear. I take it you're referring to what
happens when you *hold* an arrow key down. I see the jerkiness you refer
to not the slowness.

Does it help if you use a different font? I guess what I'm thinking here
is that maybe Entourage is performing some sort of calculation to figure
out where the i-bar should be on the page, and this might take time if
the characters are of varied widths. (The slowness might be related to
the fact that Entourage does hard line-breaking as you compose an
email.) What happens if you use a monospaced font? m.

 

[mcnaugha]

We're seeing this issue, especially after upgrading to Tiger.

Are you using an Exchange server with Entourage? We're not sure if
that's connected. Perhaps an IMAP connection.

Seems Entourage 2004 (11.1) is hogging the CPU when doing syncs to
Exchange. This didn't affect me at all when I had a Dual Processor
machine. However I've changed to a PowerBook G4 17-inch (obviously
uniprocessor) and the problem is "painful". We're seeing this on an
iMac G4 (17-inch) too.

Symptoms are spinning beachball regularly... entire machine lock-up for
several moments, jerky text input performance. Monitoring the CPU
usage shows that Entourage is using outrageous amounts of CPU power.
Looks like some fixing-up of the CPU usage code is required.

Apologies if this is being discussed elsewhere. I did try to search,
but as evidenced by this thread people describe the problem
differently.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

McNaugha, it sounds like you are having the beachballing problem, a
different issue from the main one on this thread. Spotlight is trying to
index the database, slowing everything down. The fix is to tell Spotlight
*not* to index your Entourage Identities, by adding the
username/documents/ms user data/office 2004 identities folder under Privacy
in Spotlight system prefs.