Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Why is Office 2007 slow?

Public Service Announcement

I installed Office 2007 a few weeks ago. It has been extremely slow—ridiculously slow. Both Outlook and Word would take several minutes to load. Outlook would take over my computer whenever it received e-mail. Word would take several seconds to give me back control every time I switched documents.

I searched for some help at Microsoft.com. But I couldn't find any mention of the problem.

Then I used Google. (What did we do before Google?) I found a forum (ironically, Microsoft TechNet Forums) where someone was complaining about the sluggishness of the beta release of Outlook 2007. I followed the thread and found people talking about the retail release also being slow.

Bottom line:
The slow behavior seems to be caused by add-ins.

It seems mostly to be caused by the Make PDF add-in. That's my initial observation. Turning off the add-ins has dramatically improved the performance of both Word 2007 and Outlook 2007.

Here's how: You must be logged in as Administrator.

  • In Outlook, go to Tools–>Trust Center.
  • Click on Add-ins in the left panel.
  • At the bottom of the window click on the Go button (Manage: COM Add-ins).
  • Uncheck any add-ins you don't need or you think might be causing a problem.
  • Click on OK.
  • I exited and restarted Outlook at this point. I don't know if it's necessary.

For Word 2007

  • Click on the Logo button (upper left corner).
  • Click on the Word Options in the bottom right.
  • Select Add-ins in the left panel.
  • Do the same steps as in Outlook.

After making these changes, Word 2007 and Outlook 2007 started working the way they should.

If you found this page by searching for your own solution, I hope it was helpful. I will update this as I find out more.

Pastor Rod

"Helping You Become the Person God Created You to Be"

128 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks!! I had a problem with Outlook 2007 running dog slow. I just disabled the addins and restarted my computer. Maybe I am jumping the gun a little, but looks like Outlook 2007 is loading much faster now.

Anonymous said...

Thank you! I was having to wait for the hour glass 3-5 seconds everytime I switched between Word 2007 documents that I had open. I tried your trick, and no more hourglass.

Anonymous said...

Awesome! Thanks! It's like night and day. I had the exact same problem and I was going to re-install Office or re-format my HD before this post.

Anonymous said...

Man, you just made my day right there... Word 2007 was driving me out of my mind on a PC running on 2GB memory with chuck load of HD...
THANK YOU.
PS: Yes indeed, what did we do before Google anyway?

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the info about removing add-ins! It made a huge difference in the speed of my Word 2007.

Anonymous said...

Thanks a ton the few second delay when I would switch to Word was driving me Nutz.

How spoiled I have become.

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for sharing! I was going crazy switching between windows. Now it works fine. Thanks again.

Anonymous said...

Amazing, I almost uninstalled my antivirus software due to the delay but now it's the fault of Adobe. People shall really complain to them.

Unknown said...

Fantastic!, I was about to ditch Office 2007 altogether because of this problem!, now it works as it should. Thank You!!!

Anonymous said...

Even with all add-ins disabled all programs are irratingly slow. In general, i dont think Office 2007 is worth the money.

Anonymous said...

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I work in a publishing house and this just cured all our problems!

Thank you very much for this, what an awesome fix! No more 5 second wait time for the hourglass to disappear.

And I'm running a 2.4ghz machine with 1gb memory. Someone should tell Microsoft about this.

Anonymous said...

Seriously, that's an awesome find. Thank you for posting that solution. It made my life wayyyyyyy easier.

Anonymous said...

Excellent! This is an amazing post and has completely fixed my Word 2007 sluggishness...

JosH said...

Thank the Lord you saw the light...and shared it. Why can't the Creator, ie MSoft, do the same?

Anonymous said...

Thank you SO MUCH! You saved me 4 second every time I switch between word documents. This really helped on my irritation. Thanks again, you are the best!! I'm so happy now!! :)

Anonymous said...

Another satisfied customer. F'n Adobe. /grrrr

Anonymous said...

Some other tips for speedier loading of Office 2007 programs. Although the install gives the option to overwrite previous versions of Office, one needs to be aware that it doesn't actually remove them. You should remove previous versions of MS Office from your PC, this will also speed up Word 2007. You may get start up error messages after having done this which are easily fixed. If this is the case, feel free to email me at tech@ezpc.net.au for a free, step by step fix. Also remove anything Norton. Norton is an absolute pig and degrades system performance by up to 40 percent. Why PC manufacturers choose to use this leviathan is beyond me. There are many, many freeware antivirus / malware / firewall programs which are more than comparable to expensive so-called 'top end' programs.
Also view and disable any unused startup entries such as Groove etc .... Start/Run/msconfig/Startup and deselect the apps you don't require. This will speed up your PC boot time.
Also don't forget... there will be no computers in Heaven, the Word declares there will be found nothing there which offends!
Cheers

Anonymous said...

Great fix! Wish I would have found this days ago!

Pastor Rod said...

Thanks for all the positive comments. I'm glad the post is still being helpful.

Rod

Anonymous said...

This was very helpful. I know several people have said it already, but THANKS! I was totally about to wipe Word 2007 and start over. Great fix.

Anonymous said...

This is just great! The first thing I search from Google for this irritating problem and I found it right here!
Even though I format my machine once before searching for it though ...
Thanks for your generous for putting this up!

Anonymous said...

Thanks! This has been a problem for me for the last year!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot, this works fine. I disabled the only add-in I could see (which was the pdf-maker add-in) and Word 2007 doesn't hang anymore, when I switch windows! I didn't even reboot. :o)

Anonymous said...

Thanks! I was really chugging along in Word 2007 and Outlook before using your fix. VERY fast now!

Anonymous said...

Thank you!! I'm nearly go back to Word2003 if I haven't notice your great finding! I use to hate Word2007, but now I love it. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much! I can't believe how easy it was to fix. I can't believe it was even possible to fix it, period! I can't believe a company would release a product with such a glaring problem that was so easy to fix.

Anonymous said...

Any other suggestions? Checked add ins on word none listed to disable, disabled all but one on outlook no help will try the last one when it starts back up

Anonymous said...

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much! You are great. The result was immediate,

Anonymous said...

Thank you ver much! It took me forever to find this post on google. Everyone who read this should post a comment so that it can rank higher.

Anonymous said...

This was the second post I found when I entered my search on Google and the tip, of course, worked. So, thank you!

Anonymous said...

Hail Google. I was getting mad pissed with MS (sure, I got Office 2007 free through torrent, but that is no reason for me to stand the headache!:p). Thank you so much.

Anonymous said...

Yes!. Yours was my first hit on google and removing the word pdf add in solved the 5 second hit when switching between word windows. It was soooo annoying.
Thanks.

Anonymous said...

WOW!!! Amazing. The speed. I thought it was office 2007 was just overly bloated. Appearently it was with adobe add on which was causing all the problems. I was ready to ditch office too. They ened to get the word out that adobe is screwing up office 2007. To bad we couldn't diable add on in vista to get the speed ;)

Anonymous said...

Amazing! I'm not sure weather to blame Adobe for creating the add-in or Microsoft for allowing them to

LELANDA LEE said...

Many many blessings to you for your post of this solution, which worked perfectly. I have looked all over the Internet for help on this problem, and your solutions worked simply and perfectly. I did not relish going into my Registry to fix things despite the restore point, etc.

Anonymous said...

Add my name to the list! I upgraded to 2007 with great hesitation (even though I received a free copy from my school and was told I had to use it). The constant delay between switching documents and opening new ones was driving me crazy...Removed the add-in and worked like a charm. I can't thank you enough. You saved the computer from being recycled.

Anonymous said...

thank u seriously because of word i couldnt get any homework done and started gettin in trouble as soon as i fixed it i straight away rote a comment to show how great full i was tanks

Anonymous said...

Thanks! -worked like a charm! Outlook and Word now open in an acceptable time.

Anonymous said...

Word 2007 is much faster after making the described changes !

Anonymous said...

So useful... Thanks a lot

Ron said...

anyone experiencing a delay when switching between Word documents while using Office 2003 ? the symptoms sound exactly the same - but our users are not using any Office 2007 versions yet

Unknown said...

That solved a problem that has been driving me nuts for months. THANKS!!!

Edrichstl said...

I appreciate your post. this has helped so many of us! I passed it on to 7 or 8 folks already!

Anonymous said...

Huge help...this has been driving me crazy. Thanks very much for the post.

Anonymous said...

For over a year now this thread has helped those people overcome the obstinate obstacle of the bill gates scandal of annonyingly slow software. Thank you thread. Thank you for my faster word. Seriously though it helped alot.

Anonymous said...

world class!thanks

Anonymous said...

Unbelievable!! I was going around the bend with this problem. Fixed now - thanks heaps.

Anonymous said...

Oh My God!!! THANKYOUU!!! So much much much more convenient now!!

Anonymous said...

You have saved my day! The solution was so simple.

Anonymous said...

thank you very much, like a lot of the others, i've tried optimizing my PC thinking that my PC is bogged down with all my installed softwares. Turns out pdf add-in was the culprit

Anonymous said...

Thank you, I had a problem with word, It took 50-60 seconds to open. I only had 1 add on (PayPal) I stopped it and now it takes 1-2 seconds to open. Glad I found your site

qhnguyen said...

Many thanks!
I was about to switch back to use Office 2003, luckily I googled and found your post before uninstalling Office 2007...

Anonymous said...

That did the trick! Thanks, no wonder this post is #1 for "Office 2007 slow." You rule.

Peter said...

AMAZING!! That's gotta be the best value-for-time tip I have ever got. Five clicks and my Word--which was driving me CRAZY by delaying 3s every time I switched between documents--is instantly back to normal. You da man Rod!

Anonymous said...

thanks a lot, it took 10s between windows, before your tip!!

Jose Miguel said...

Thank you a lot from Spain.
I was getting crazy last night.
Good job!

Anonymous said...

It worked a treat. It was taking 10 seconds to load and 20 seconds to close Word. Now its instantaneous. Thanks.

Unknown said...

YOU ARE MY HERO

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much,
I thought I was going to go insane
-Hell I even paid for this software
but you little cure work like a charm.

Guess that's why you have the number 1 spot on google. ;-)

Thanks again.
PV1 Michael S. Hoium ARNG

Anonymous said...

I don't usually leave comments, but WOW -- this was amazing -- I just upgraded on by business laptop, and almost instantly regretted it because outlook was so painfully slow -- my e-mails today have been coming in at the rate of about 5-10 / minute (it's been a busy day), and with the slowness of outlook, I could barely keep up...

I disabled some of the add-ins (mainly the ones that were new with the new version of office), and WOW -- Outlook is very, very fast right now..

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks a ton, this was pissing me off also. I was amazed at the amount of useless add-ons in outlook.

Anonymous said...

Just agreeing with all the others, and thanks. Outlook was taking over 1 minute to load on an otherwise fast computer. This trick works with Excel also

PS said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

THANKS

Anonymous said...

I just disabled all my unneeded Word 2007 add-ins. Word now starts so much faster it's amazing.

Unknown said...

Thanks, worked perfectly!

Cos said...

Brilliant!

Anonymous said...

OMGosh, what a difference! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Like night and day!

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much. The main difference I observed was due to the adobe addin. Once I removed that, it was super fast.

Anonymous said...

I had the Visagesoft eXpertPDF addin enabled in Word 2007. Thanks to this list I've removed it and Word 2007 now works like it should always have done - no 10 second waits every time I change to a different window!!!
Thanks!!!!

Anonymous said...

Excellent!! It worked! Thank you!!

thezfam said...

This the solution I've been looking for. I experience slow response when switching between Word 2007 SP1 documents and after applying the suggested fix, it started working like a champ! Thank you!!

Anonymous said...

THat's what i'm searching for
Tanks a lot --- ;-)

Unknown said...

Thank you very much. That fixes it.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tip. It worked! It is so nice to speed things up!

Julie said...

Nearly two years after posting this, you're still making people's lives easier. Thank you!!

Anonymous said...

Praise the Lord! That worked great for me.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

I didn't find any pdf add-ins in either Outlook or Word, but i disabled all that were active. In Word that was only the Bluetooth add-in.
Now my PC is responsive again, as any 3GHz dual core PC should be. Thanks a lot!

Shah said...

I had ABBYY PDF Transformer 2.0 installed. Its installed by default add-ins. After that Office 2007 was running like its on 1MB memory.
Removed it and all i can say is wow.

Anonymous said...

thank you

Anonymous said...

Thank god, or better thank you!!!!

Anonymous said...

Office 2007 is slow even with all addins disabled, and more, in my, and a few PC more, excel 2007 can consume all memory, real and virtual, when I make cyclic calculations in few more than 1000 words sheets. It just consumes memory byte by byte so after a few days it crashes. So the advantages that new excel has more than 65k words is a some synthetic feature for me: good sounded but none practical.

Anonymous said...

To the post above: this problems doesn't exist when I am using old xls format in compatibility mode. But that is not solution for me due to lack of new user interface control (Ribbon).

Anonymous said...

RE; Office 2007 is slow even with all addins disabled ... good sounded but none practical.

Solution;
open Word.. go to Word Options below... go to Trust Center.. got o Trust Center Settings... go to Trusted Locations.. highlight C:\...ppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\StartUp Word 2007 default location: StartUp then Modify by checking Subfolders of this location are also trusted.. click Ok then Ok and ok..

Anonymous said...

in addition to the above is you must also let one of the microsoft office's program run at start up.. ie. run cmd then msconfig then go to selective startup then go to startup on top and just simply check either grove monitor utility or microsoft office one note that will make them satrt during the boot up process,,

Anonymous said...

Try this if you are running a network printer:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/280821

Sped up my opening from 15 secs to 1 second.

:)

Anonymous said...

Fantastic! You are the greatest!! I so appreciate the help!

Anonymous said...

I had a new computer installed and I was so frustrated with Word 2007. I was tempted to go back to my older computer and use word 2003, which was faster. I was getting an hourglass for 8 seconds everytime I opened or changed word documents.

This solved my problems. Thank you for posting!

Mike said...

Thanks! It solved my problem wat was irritating me.

Achal said...

There is a way to disable the addon in Vista as well. It's just a bit different. First click on the start button, then in search, search "winword.exe" right click and click open as administrator. Then follow the same steps that were here.
Special thanks to: http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNKLJKDJPXFUQ3R

Varun said...

You Rock Dude ... Thanx a Ton

Anonymous said...

Thanks, this is great fix!

Vjekoslav said...

Great..One day more working with slow Word and I would go crazy..

Thanks..

Anonymous said...

Thank you! I was going crazy switching to Word. Problem solved.

Typical MS knows best (not!).

Anonymous said...

Well over a year and this solution is still popular and on the mark.

Anonymous said...

Thanks from one more satisfied customer!

Anonymous said...

Pastor Rod,

Many thanks. I have just got back days of my life.....

Anonymous said...

MAN A GREAT SOLUTION THE EXTREAM PROBLEM THAT IAM FACING SINCE LAST FEW DAYS, EVEN I THOUGHT OF UNINSTALLING OFFICE 2007 PERMANENATLY. AGAIN THANKS FOR A GREAT SOLUTION. HATS OF.....

from : sskota_ca

vidilynn said...

Office 2007 is a HUGE memory hog. If you are running any other programs that are large hogs as well, like Microsoft CRM for example, you need more than 1 GB RAM in your computer. Otherwise, disabling the add-ins and cleaning up your .pst files won't make much difference in the performance.

Unknown said...

Thanks, Thanks, Thanks!
I have been fighting this problem with Word and Excel being excruciatingly slow for 3 months. I removed the add-ins like you instructed to do in Word (it worked for Excel also) and the problem is gone. I did not find this solution anywhere else that I looked.

Unknown said...

My exuberance was premature and short-lived. After 1 1/2 days of and apparent cure, my MS programs have gone back to their old, slow ways. Do you have any suggestions?

Anonymous said...

As another solution, my machine started the "slow Word 2007 thing" and it was driving me crazy. It turns out, I changed my default printer to a network printer that I normally access from my office. Apparently Word tries to connect with the default printer and if it is not available (as when you take your laptop home which I do) or when the printer itself is slow to answer (which happens in our office situation) the delay in loading word can be VERY LONG.

Anonymous said...

excellent. It works.

Unknown said...

Thanks man, i was about to break my laptop into pieces because of this stupid issue.
you saved me 10sec each time i switch between docs.

however, 2007 office is a lemon despite all its features.

thanks again.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Thank you! You saved my day!

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Regardless of the fact that many have said so in the past I also want to thank you.

In my case the add-inn that was causing trouble was from Endnote X1, it grinded my laptop to a halt regardless of my 2.2 Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of RAM and SSD.

So if anybody has this add in active with Word 2007 on Windows 7 Pro 64 bit I would recommend that you disable it.

Anonymous said...

Also, after you close and re-open Word 2007, try putting the pdfmaker add-in right back. The new speed remained when I tried that.

Anonymous said...

Thanks a million tried for some time to find answer on Microsoft website nothing!
Hats off to all those people who share their experiences so willingly and freely counters some of the bad publicity the web attracts

mish said...

Thank you a lot for this tip. really useful. Maybe there are more causes for slowness, but this add-ins tip really improved performance. It's the same for excel. After disabling those addins, excel is loading much faster. Thank you again:)

Anonymous said...

Instead of this tip, I had a default network print server, so this worked for me: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/280821

Spent a week or more but finally got it from, guess what, the correct terms "word 2007 slow hourglass connecting to printer" in my google search. Your site came up first, then the one from MS above, thanks!

Anonymous said...

awesome...hit the nail on its head...thanks a lot...

well..this tells a lot about the quality check at microsoft...no wonder they are going down...

keep up the good work

Anonymous said...

Brilliant! Many thanks for that tip. Great one.

Anonymous said...

Thank

Sunny said...

very grateful!The longer use of computers, the more software installed, registry garbage inside the computer registry will be more. Most of the software will add unnecessary junk to the registry which makes the computer crash or slower and slower. so we need registry cleaner software to slove the problem.

Anonymous said...

idem all the comments above. One of the best, fastest fixes I have found.

Anonymous said...

THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Great, Solved my problem, and in turn I solved many others, now I am a hero :)

Anonymous said...

I've removed Add-Ins but still slow saving and opening files from a server.

Please help, thanks

Nick The Computer Guy said...

I found my office slowed down when trying to open a document due to a new network printer software I installed. I loaded the HP 3525n software on different machines in my building and both Office 2003 and 2007 started to lag when opening a document up from my docs or any other folder. The only work around to get Office to open faster was to either uninstall the printer software from that computer completely, or actually open up the office program such as word and then go to FILE, open and then select the document that way. The lag occurs only when I try to open the document by double clicking it, wheter it be located in the my docs folder or a place like on the desktop. Anyone know of an update or fix for this problem.

Anonymous said...

thank you much i got it really well, thank you again

Anonymous said...

many more thanks it is wonderful
MAHEHSH FROM PEDABAYALU VISAKHA DT AP

imHemo said...

Almost 6 years after your posting and this is still helping people. All of my Office 2007 products are extremely slow to load on a Windows 7 Premium x64 with 4GB ram. This helped me track down an add-on for Word that added 5-10 seconds on startup, I removed it and startup is almost instant now. Huzzah! I will track through other Office programs soon, thank you for this insight!

Anonymous said...

Why 6 years! Even in 2014 the trick worked fabulously; making it a run for 8 years! Thanks a ton...