Slow Opening Excel 2003 Files in Excel 2007 (Updated)

When opening Microsoft Excel 2003 files in Microsoft Office Excel 2007 without having Excel 2007 already running you may find that files that a long time to open (20-60 seconds) while Excel 2007 or even Microsoft Office Word 2007, PowerPoint 2007 files take only a portion of that time to load.

The solution to this problem is easy and does not require any additional software other than the standard Microsoft Windows Explorer.

1. Open Windows Explorer (explorer.exe)
2. Select Tools | Folder Options from the menu
3. Go to the File Types tab.
   
4. Select list item XLS (Microsoft Office Excel 97-2003 Worksheet) and click on Advanced.
   If the “Appl ication used to perform action:” field the default value should be “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12EXCEL.EXE” /e” . Change this to “C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12EXCEL.EXE” /e “%1″ . Remember to enclose the full excel.exe path and %1 in parenthesis. Since Windows 95 this is a way to escape spaces in file names; %1 will return the file name of that file that is being opened by double-clicking.You can uncheck “U se DDE” but Microsoft Office Excel 2007 will bring it back to what you see above when you next open it.
   
5. Just confirm (hit “OK” ) on all the Microsoft Windows Explorer dialogs and next time you open a Excel 2003 file in Excel 2007 without having it already running you won’t have to wait!
6. If the above listed steps don’t fix the problem, simply add the Lookup Wizard add-in in Excel. Some readers have reported that solved the problem for them! To install it click the Office Button, Excel Options, Add-Ins, and then click Manage Excel Add-ins | Go on the bottom of the window, select Lookup Wizard and click OK!

How to Make Microsoft Word 2007 Load Faster

Here are some tips that might help you launch Microsoft Word more quickly if it feels slow. Not all will work, and this applies only to Microsoft Word 2007 for Windows. And I’m assuming you’ve already got plenty of RAM and hard disk space, defragement your files regularly and are using a computer fast enough to handle Word 2007.

Remove Unnecessary Add-ins

Click on the Office logo in the top left corner, click on Options at the bottom of the menu, and then Add-Ins towards the bottom of the list in the Word Options window.

Select COM Add-ins at the bottom drop down menu called Manage: and click on the Go… button.

Unselect as many of the Add-Ins in the list and click OK.

Prevent links from being updated

Back in the main Word Options window, click on Advanced.

Scroll down to the bottom and uncheck the Update automatic links at open box.

Click OK.

Change your Default Printer

Some folk have reported faster loading times if they select a different printer. It’s definitely worth trying.

Remove Antivirus Checking

Some users have reported improvement by disabling Norton Antivirus from checking every file when it’s opened. The easiest way to do this, assuming you know what you’re doing, is:

Hit the Window key and then select Run from the Start menu.

Copy the following and paste it into the Run box:

regsvr32 /u “C:\Program Files\Norton Internet Security\Norton AntiVirus\officeav.dll” .

If the Norton feature is installed this should remove it. (It follows that other antivirus products may be doing something similar. The easiest way to find out is to look at the status bar at the bottom of the Microsoft Word window and see if a message like “Scanning file for viruses” or somesuch appears when a file is loading.)