Office 2007 slow to open files when open associated files

XP Pro SP2 x64, Office 2007

This happened about 6 months ago, then disapeared and is now back. When
opening Word or Excel 2007 documents, from either Explorer, from an email
attachment or from the desktop, it takes around 40 seconds for the respective
application to load then even longer to load the document. This is
irrespective of whether the document is on a network drive or local disk.
If I open the office application from the Start Menu and the open the
document from either the recent documents or File>Open, it is lightning fast.

I have tried all the other suggested posts of removing DDE check boxes etc
but this only complicates things and cause more problems.

I have run the Office Diagnostics everything passes.

It seems Word or Excel documents takes about 40 seconds to respective on
your machine. You have tried DDE check and also run Office Diagnostics.

Base on my experience, it seems to be mostly caused by DDE.

Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) is an old technology and it is being supplanted
by OLE. By default when double clicking on a doc file, windows explorer
acts as a DDE client and sends DDE message broadcast to all open window. If
an instance of word is open, then it will reply back and that instance of
winword will open the file.

If we remove the DDE section, and have %1 .The dde message broadcast does
not happen and a new instance of winword will open the file.

I would like to know when you remove the DDE section, does the file opens
faster and what kind of issues we encountered?

Also, since the removing DDE section is not helpful on your machine, let's
try to run in clean boot environment which could also workaround this issue.

How to perform a clean boot procedure
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/331796

After starting Windows in clean boot, please double click an Office
document to see if the issue persists.

I am just checking to see how this is going. Please drop me a quick note at
your convenience to let me know the current status of this issue. If you
have any concerns, please do not hesitate to let me know. Thanks, and have
a great day! :)

Sorry for the delay. The problem appears to have vanished as quickly as it
appeared.

If you have any questions in the future, feel free to start a new thread
here, we are happy to be of assistance.

I have this issue on a new XP Professional Machine with Office 2007. I
reinstalled Office and the problem went away for about 24 hours, it is now
back. If try to open a Word or Excel file from either a network share or
local drive using a shortcut or Windows Explorer you get a long delay in the
file opening. If you open Work or Excel first and then do an open the files
open quickly. Looking for a solution that will save a few steps.

[JZT]

Ms. Cao,

This page has helped in that I can now open files, but I still have a couple of questions:
1. What is the root cause of the problem
2. Is it strictly a Windows XP issue?
3. I have been running MSO 2007 for 18 months. Why did this behaviour only begin to present itself in the last few days?
4. If MSFT knows about this issue, why hasn't it been corrected?

Thanks for your reply

So what was the resolution? I am getting the same problem with XP Pro and
Office 2003.

Sorry, I don't understand the message. I too am having this problem. What
is the resolution?

I dont understand why this has been going on for a year without a proper
resolution.
Why hasn't Microsoft fixed this yet?

My office was working fine until a couple of weeks ago when this started
happening to mine.

I have read all the info on dde, norton, etc.
This is not the problem.
If dde worked before you should not have to change it to get it to work now.

I have 3 computers - all running the same office and norton and anything else.
The problem is only on the one computer.
The dde is the same on all 3 - norton is the same on all 3
The only thing I dont know if it is the same is any Microsoft updates.

Alot of people are having this problem and it is with word and excel not
opening files when you double click on the file.

Microsoft - What is the problem here and what is the fix?
Its been going on long enough so there should be a fix.
You are the software experts - you write the programs, so why cant you fix it?

Yes I am a little upset because there is no clearcut fix for this after a
year!!!

I have been having exactly the same problem for the last three weeks
now. Turning off (unchecking) DDE in the advanced properties of the
file associations for MS Office apps and adding a "%1" switch to the
command line has fixed those apps....but why do I suddently have to do
that? Any ideas out there?

Usual reason is some 3rd party programs installation has subverted the
DDE mechanisim, you can do the "fix" like you did, or reinstall Office
to do an "official" repair.