Word document opens slowly

[Frank Andringa]

Hello,

I would like to post a problem which I encounter every day, more and more.

I have an citrix farm which publish word2000. Users are complaining that
when they open documents, created by version 2003 it often takes up to 30
minutes before it's fully loaded.

To investigate this problem I have build an virtual pc environment on which
I’m able to reproduce the exact problem.
This virtual pc consists of Windows XP (with and Without any SP's and fixes)
and Office2000 (with and Without any SP's and fixes) When I try to open any
document , created by version 2003, it take most often up to 30 minutes.
These documents are from basic plain text up to huge templates and form based
complex documents.

upgrading to a newer version is not possible until 2008 due to budget cuts
and current hardware limits

I hope someone has run into this before and is willing to share his
experience to solve this annoying issue

 

[Terry Farrell]

Frank

There are two common reasons for Word opening up a document slowly:

1. The document is attached to a template that it cannot find
2. An add-in or acre that is not fully compatible.

Item 2 you can test by starting Word in Safe Mode: from Start, Run, type in

winword /a

and press enter. Word opens in its default install made bypassing user
customisations, templates, add-ins, macros. etc. Try starting one of the
problem documents now: is it any faster?

For problem 1, open a document and go to Tools, Templates and add-in and see
what template the document is attached to. Is that template available to the
workstation?

Has this helped? If not, try the tips in the following FAQ:
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

An "acre"? I assume that was a typo, but what was meant eludes me. ;-)

 

[Terry Farrell]

T'was the magik spell checker. I mistyped macro as 'acro' which the spell
checker decided was acre.

Terry

 

[Frank Andringa]

Gents,

As a answer to your proposed "solutions" i can report that this issue even
occurs on newly created documents filled with plain text. In this scenario
there was no template or whatsoever involved.

It has been tested on clean and so called "out of the box" Windows and
Office installations

Regards

Frank Andringa

 

[Terry Farrell]

But did you test it in Safe Mode using the /a switch (which is NOT the same
as testing on a fresh install because things like the printer driver and
graphics driver will still affect Word)?

Terry