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10 03 2008

Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook) Slow When Connected To Network, But Fast When Not?

Posted by: Buzz in Microsoft Office 2003, Windows

Yes the title seems a little weird, but it’s a little problem that has been the bane of my and a fellow techs existence for a couple months now.

An international office on permanent VPN connection to where I work would experience extremely slow load times of office documents even if they were local to the machine, strangely this only occurred when connected to the network (and hence to the domain).

What was eventually found by the afor mentioned fellow tech was that every time an office application would load (i.e. open a new document) it was “polling” the entire domain for listed printers and folders, not a problem in the local office with Gigabit connectivity, but a major problem for an international office with several employees over a low bandwidth line …

So how to fix this?!?

 (Assuming windows XP & Classic Menu)

START > CONTROL PANEL > Folder Options > View

 Uncheck “Automatically search for network printers and folders” > OK

 Now make sure you exit all office applications (better yet just reboot)

If this does not solve the issue, or only provides a slight gain it’s time to remove the “recent files” list, from within excel

TOOLS > OPTIONS > General

 Uncheck “Recently use file list” … Exit all office apps (or reboot).

And try again, this _appears_ to solve the slow down.

Any problems drop me a comment.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Microsoft Office 2003, Windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

16 Responses to “Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook) Slow When Connected To Network, But Fast When Not?”
  1. tehnoobshow says: April 3rd, 2008 at 8:40 am

    I had easy time reading your blog. But it seems now it’s over :( . Man, this post sucks. I hope at least the next one won’t be.

  2. Buzz says: April 4th, 2008 at 7:44 am

    Yeh kinda not had time to post anymore :-P

    There is an article on chrooting users and still allowing multi directory access of vsftpd in the works.

  3. Paul says: January 19th, 2009 at 3:08 am

    I am running Vista Home Premium edition. And I am having the same VPN issues. Microsoft office files are slow, to the point of crashing the machine, at times. We have tried upgrading server software, but still not working. . .

  4. Buzz says: January 19th, 2009 at 9:29 am

    Hi Paul,

    I would have a chat with your network administrator, as it sounds to me like you are getting heavy packet loss on your VPN connection, this can be the result of multiple factors not limited to your internet connection.

    Without knowing more on your VPN setup, there is not much more I can advise I am afraid.

    Cheers

    Buzz

  5. Liliggyracin says: February 14th, 2009 at 2:28 am

    Hi I am having a similar issue but it is not when I am connected via VPN it happens when I am connected to the Network in General. I have pictures that are located on the desktop and if I go into Word Excel or PP and choose Insert>Picture>From File it hangs for about 3-5 minutes then generates the images. These arent huge files or anything as soon as I disconnect from the network via pulling the cable all pictures can insert without a hitch. Also if I just use the Drag and drop method they come in quickly. Any ideas? I have tried your ideas and havent had any luck.

  6. Buzz says: February 14th, 2009 at 10:55 am

    Hi Liliggyracin,

    As soon as you said pictures and desktop I began to think this must be your user profile, windows has a nasty habit of loading your whole profile into memory when logging in, your profile consists of the items on you desktop and everything on Documents and Settings (including my documents.

    Check out this quick screen cast on how to list the user profiles on your system: http://screencast.com/t/4oVICDHN9o5 if yours is above 500mb, I’d suggest moving items off the desktop into a folder on your HD and just placing a shortcut on your desktop to it, the same goes for any large files in your my documents folder.

    Cheers

    Buzz

  7. Liliggyracin says: February 15th, 2009 at 12:51 am

    Size of the profile is 224 meg. Tried to pull them off the desktop and place them on the Root of C and I get the same results. Have racked my brain pretty much all night over this and I cannot get a grasp of what is going on. Why does Office care if I am on the network or not. I thought maybe it was a disconnected drive not any mapped drives. I thought maybe it was a bad printer driver. Nothing happening there either. I have increased the virtual memory out of anger and that didnt work. Any other ideas?

  8. Liliggyracin says: February 15th, 2009 at 1:27 am

    Ahh ha. Figured out something just a second ago. If I change my view to List inside word then I can browse to those locations and open up files without a problem. Seems to only be when viewing thumbnails. At least for now. Will keep messing with it and see if that is actually the case.

  9. Buzz says: February 16th, 2009 at 9:29 am

    Hi Liliggyracin,

    Sounds to me then like a bloated Thumbs.db file (hidden), I’d switch on view hidden files, and delete that thumbs.db, you may get some lag when it regenerates, but with any luck it will resolve preview lag.

  10. Liliggyracin says: February 17th, 2009 at 9:02 pm

    Well figured out the issue today. For some reason there was shortcuts in that picture folder to other desktops on pcs that are in the classroom. (Easier for the teacher to drag items to their desktops that way (so she says)) but anyway I deleted those shortcuts and boom problem resolved. She hasnt noticed it until lately because her class size has fallen back a bit and now she has computers that arent getting turned on. I felt so stupid that it was so easy as that. Anyways thanks for the help I appreciate it.

  11. Buzz says: February 17th, 2009 at 9:18 pm

    Notta prob :-)

  12. Liliggyracin says: February 18th, 2009 at 2:51 pm

    And if there is ever anything I can help you with dont hesitate to send me an email. you have it now! :P

  13. Buzz says: February 18th, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    best off adding me on Jabber/gtalk: HIDDEN EMAIL :-)

  14. Santosh says: April 20th, 2009 at 10:40 am

    hey thnx for posting the solution about increasing performance of Office package..i had a domain environment in my office and the Excel works very slow(while saving the file sometimes it take more than 5 minutes and some time have to restart the application because excel file doesnot respond)…i had applied the above solution but am sry to say that it doesnot help me out…so if their is any other solutions to improve the performance of excel in domain environment then plz help me out..u can mail me the solution at HIDDEN EMAIL

    thnx in advance..

  15. Jacnut says: May 15th, 2009 at 9:53 am

    Thanks Liliggyracin,
    I had exactly the same problem. Insert a file would take up to 5 min in Outlook 2003. I removed the shortcuts to access the network and bingo, problem solved. I now access the server through the ‘network drive’ on ‘My Computer’.

  16. aquajc says: March 15th, 2010 at 5:13 am

    Similar problem and i’ve tried all your instructions, actually this was adviced by my ITadmin (somehow felt like he too went thru ur post), but the problem still persists. any action on excel takes a while, in fact it feels like another mirror file opens, something is checked and then processed. it may be just a filter or end of the page command, but takes time. all this disappears the minute i log off VPN.
    would be of great help if you could get back as it would save a lot of my work time.
    cheers

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