Excel 2007 and Word 2007 are very slow when closing or opening a file

Question

I have a new PC with a fresh install of Office 2007. This computer freezes randomly when I open or close an Excel or Word file. It seems to freeze more often when the file is from a network share.

What happens is the following:

I open an Excel file by double clicking. Excel opens. It shows something in the statusbar like 'communicating \...' some share (where the file is stored). The the message disappears and Excel is frozen. After a while (one minute, or more), the file is shown.

Same happens when I close a file. Excel just freezes. There's no high CPU, or high memory usage.

Some other websites suggested that this might have to do with network printer drivers. I deleted all of them. I also disabled all addins.

What should I do to fix this?

Answer 1

I think I fixed this by disabling Offline files in Windows XP.

Answer 2

This can be due to non-operational or non-accessible printers (especially network ones).

Sys Internal's Process Monitor might show what is taking time, but can be hardwork given the size of logs that will create.

Answer 3

Any non-responsive network share (not just printers) can cause pauses and freezes in Windows.

Remove any suspect drive letter network shares, and also any in My Network Places.

Mismatches between server O/S and client O/S can cause problems too, for example early unpatched Server 2003 versus Vista.

Answer 4

Have you tried this?

• Do not double click on your XLS/DOC File.
• Instead, open Excel/Word application and then do a File->Open

Share your findings of above.

Answer 5

Try disabling any antivirus software you have running and see if Word/Excel are still hanging.