Word and Excel files slow to load.

**Susan Bradley** · 23-10-2007

I need some help to fix the performance issue of Microsoft Office. It is working extremely slow. When I open any file it takes a huge time to load up completely. It is a bit annoying. Compare to that my old system works much better. I am also having a XP system that has Office 2003 on it. It opens more frequently. Is there anyone facing the same issue. What can be done to fix the problem.

**Dakshi** · 23-10-2007

There can be many reason behind the issue. One of the most common reason is antivirus. When you open a file the antivirus scans it. And that may affect the performance. The file that you are trying to open must be very large. So you will need to give it sometime. The more you can do is add more physical memory to your system so that the system must perform really well.

**jimlloyd3392** · 14-11-2007

Someone on one of the threads made an obscure comment about a networked printer that wasn't working. Lo and behold we had this same problem. An HP 6940 networked printer that a user had been using was taken down off the network but the printer was still installed on this user's pc (the one with the excel slowdown) and we de-installed the printer and the excel files now open as they did before . . . much faster.

**Frragrant** · 02-01-2008

Just disable the antivirus and then check back. If it is working fine then you will need to find a good alternative for that. The antivirus may be causing the problem. You can also try to run a repair setup of Office through installation media. In case of any problem with the installation files the repair setup will restored the old settings and also replace the files that may be buggy. Just perform that and check again. I am sure that would be worth.

**paulshaffer** · 19-06-2009

This may not sound like the same issue but I've been working on this issue for days. I have done various malware scans both in Safe Mode and regular mode. I finally started using msconfig and disabling program startups. Then continued using it to disable services. When I disabled the Print Spooler service, spoolsv.exe, my slow (3-5 min) file associations ended. So I re-enabled it, reboot, and clicked on an Excel file; the problem was back. So while waiting for Excel to open the file, I went into task manager and killed the spoolsv service. Wham! My file was opened in Excel.

At present, I don't know what the solution is. My file version is 5.1.2600.5512 with a file size of 57,856. Virus scans do not complain about it. Maybe I just have some messed-up drivers.

**paulshaffer** · 20-06-2009

I uninstalled and reinstalled some TPC/IP printers and that didn't work. So, I used Windows Resource Kit 2003 cleanspl.exe and blitzed all of the printer/spooler stuff. Then recreated the Standard TCP/IP port with a registry import I found on the web. Then added my printers back in. This time I installed the printers using Windows and browsing for the .inf file on a CD or web driver download(I had to download and unzip the Toshiba package and then browse in the extract directory for the .inf file). Now printers and file associations work.

I think this trouble may have had something to do the huge HP install package for our M2727nf. This time I only installed the printer driver for HP and Toshiba. Period. No fancy-dancy 50MB installs.

I have been chasing this file association issue for several weeks. If you kill your spoolsv.exe process and your file associations are back to normal speed, start digging into your printers and print spooler stuff. Whew!