Excel 2007 very slow to open even the simplest worksheet

Hi SDP!

I can only guess, but I would guess this:

Explorer tries to send a DDE message, finds there is no Excel around to
receive it, starts Excel, immediately sends the DDE message again, finds
Excel is not ready to receive it yet, and decides to wait till excel
becomes available. By some mistake, it does not wake up when excel is
ready, I cannot begin to guess why that might be. Therefore it probably
decides to try again after one minute, and succeeds then. Now if you
press the minimize button and Excel actually changes window state,
Explorer might notice this and decide to try again immediately.

Wild guessing, but I'm pretty sure that DDE has its part in this.

Martin

SDP wrote:
I don't know why, but minimizing the Excel window after 2 or 3 seconds always
makes my files open - the window will minimize and bounce back open with your
file immediately. I'd love to know why this works.

"John" wrote:

I have worksheets that only have from 1 to 7 rows and Excel 2007 takes
anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds to open these worksheets. I am running
Windows XP SP2
on a IBM/Lenova with 1 Gig of ram and a 3 Ghz processor.

Is there any setting I can change (or turn off) to speed this muther up?

Well, I just used your fix and it works great. The only thing I had to
change was #5: "List item XLS" to "List item XLSX"

Thanks for the fix; it's making me look smart around the office.

"Martin von Gagern" wrote:

Hi SDP!

I can only guess, but I would guess this:

Explorer tries to send a DDE message, finds there is no Excel around to
receive it, starts Excel, immediately sends the DDE message again, finds
Excel is not ready to receive it yet, and decides to wait till excel
becomes available. By some mistake, it does not wake up when excel is
ready, I cannot begin to guess why that might be. Therefore it probably
decides to try again after one minute, and succeeds then. Now if you
press the minimize button and Excel actually changes window state,
Explorer might notice this and decide to try again immediately.

Wild guessing, but I'm pretty sure that DDE has its part in this.

Martin

SDP wrote:
I don't know why, but minimizing the Excel window after 2 or 3 seconds always
makes my files open - the window will minimize and bounce back open with your
file immediately. I'd love to know why this works.

"John" wrote:

I have worksheets that only have from 1 to 7 rows and Excel 2007 takes
anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds to open these worksheets. I am running
Windows XP SP2
on a IBM/Lenova with 1 Gig of ram and a 3 Ghz processor.

Is there any setting I can change (or turn off) to speed this muther up?

Well, I just used your fix and it works great. The only thing I had to
change was #5: "List item XLS" to "List item XLSX"

Thanks for the fix; it's making me look smart around the office.

"Martin von Gagern" wrote:

Hi SDP!

I can only guess, but I would guess this:

Explorer tries to send a DDE message, finds there is no Excel around to
receive it, starts Excel, immediately sends the DDE message again, finds
Excel is not ready to receive it yet, and decides to wait till excel
becomes available. By some mistake, it does not wake up when excel is
ready, I cannot begin to guess why that might be. Therefore it probably
decides to try again after one minute, and succeeds then. Now if you
press the minimize button and Excel actually changes window state,
Explorer might notice this and decide to try again immediately.

Wild guessing, but I'm pretty sure that DDE has its part in this.

Martin

SDP wrote:
I don't know why, but minimizing the Excel window after 2 or 3 seconds always
makes my files open - the window will minimize and bounce back open with your
file immediately. I'd love to know why this works.

"John" wrote:

I have worksheets that only have from 1 to 7 rows and Excel 2007 takes
anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds to open these worksheets. I am running
Windows XP SP2
on a IBM/Lenova with 1 Gig of ram and a 3 Ghz processor.

Is there any setting I can change (or turn off) to speed this muther up?

Congratulations to looking smart.

Now consider how dumb MS looks in this context! After all, it's their
program, their OS, they should have known how to address this issue. ;-)

Martin

SDP wrote:
Well, I just used your fix and it works great. The only thing I had to
change was #5: "List item XLS" to "List item XLSX"

Thanks for the fix; it's making me look smart around the office.

"Martin von Gagern" wrote:

Hi SDP!

I can only guess, but I would guess this:

Explorer tries to send a DDE message, finds there is no Excel around to
receive it, starts Excel, immediately sends the DDE message again, finds
Excel is not ready to receive it yet, and decides to wait till excel
becomes available. By some mistake, it does not wake up when excel is
ready, I cannot begin to guess why that might be. Therefore it probably
decides to try again after one minute, and succeeds then. Now if you
press the minimize button and Excel actually changes window state,
Explorer might notice this and decide to try again immediately.

Wild guessing, but I'm pretty sure that DDE has its part in this.

Martin

SDP wrote:
I don't know why, but minimizing the Excel window after 2 or 3 seconds always
makes my files open - the window will minimize and bounce back open with your
file immediately. I'd love to know why this works.

"John" wrote:

I have worksheets that only have from 1 to 7 rows and Excel 2007 takes
anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds to open these worksheets. I am running
Windows XP SP2
on a IBM/Lenova with 1 Gig of ram and a 3 Ghz processor.

Is there any setting I can change (or turn off) to speed this muther up?

I had the same [slow opening] issue. Martin's solution worked for me.
Thanks!

Martin,

This is some time later than your post, however I have just started with the
verrry slow opening of 2007 excel spreadsheets. I'm running xp with Office
2007 upgrade.
I searched Discussion groups and found your reply. My problem is; Try as I
may, I cannot locate Menu item FOLDER OPTIONS (forgive the shouting) Could
you possibly start me from the beginning? It appears your fix works for all
who are smarter than me in getting to the right church.

Thanks in advance

Bob

"Martin von Gagern" wrote:

Does http://martin.von-gagern.net/howtos/excel2007load help?
I wrote about this in another thread here, but I know many people only
monitor their own thread. Sorry for the duplicate to everyone else.

John wrote:
I have worksheets that only have from 1 to 7 rows and Excel 2007 takes
anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds to open these worksheets. I am running
Windows XP SP2
on a IBM/Lenova with 1 Gig of ram and a 3 Ghz processor.

Is there any setting I can change (or turn off) to speed this muther up?

Hi Robert!

I'm not sure whether this is going to help, but let's start from the
beginning.
1. Klick on the Start menu button in the lower left corner
2. Choose the Applications submenu and look for Windows Explorer
1.+2. Instead of 1. and 2. as described above, you may also press and
hold your Windows key and then press E
3. Now you should see an Explorer window,
and this window should have a menu bar
4. Choose the "Tools" menu
5. Look for anything remotely like "Folder Options"
6. Now you are ready for step 4. of my online instruction

This description can, however, be inaccurate for several reasons.
1. I wrote it down from memory, as I'm usually using Linux and only boot
Windows when I can't avoid to.
2. My Windows is all German, and although I was told that my
translations to english were correct, there might still be an error
there. I have seen a screenshot of the "Folder Options" dialog box,
so that's really its name, but the menu item might be called
differently.
3. This was for Windows XP, but I guess other versions of Windows might
have other versions of Explorer with different menu entries.

In case all else fails, you might well ask here on this forum about
where to find this dialog, for someone out there is bound to have the
same version of windows as you do and have located it.

Greetings,
Martin von Gagern

robert morris wrote:
Martin,

This is some time later than your post, however I have just started with the
verrry slow opening of 2007 excel spreadsheets. I'm running xp with Office
2007 upgrade.
I searched Discussion groups and found your reply. My problem is; Try as I
may, I cannot locate Menu item FOLDER OPTIONS (forgive the shouting) Could
you possibly start me from the beginning? It appears your fix works for all
who are smarter than me in getting to the right church.

Thanks in advance

Bob

"Martin von Gagern" wrote:
Does http://martin.von-gagern.net/howtos/excel2007load help?

Martin,

Beautiful!!

Excel sheets now open approx 20 times faster. Before, took 40-45 seconds,
now, 2 - seconds. Many thanks. Where is Microsoft on this one? I suppose
they are busy repairing Vista and 2007.

Bob Morris


"Martin von Gagern" wrote:

Hi Robert!

I'm not sure whether this is going to help, but let's start from the
beginning.
1. Klick on the Start menu button in the lower left corner
2. Choose the Applications submenu and look for Windows Explorer
1.+2. Instead of 1. and 2. as described above, you may also press and
hold your Windows key and then press E
3. Now you should see an Explorer window,
and this window should have a menu bar
4. Choose the "Tools" menu
5. Look for anything remotely like "Folder Options"
6. Now you are ready for step 4. of my online instruction

This description can, however, be inaccurate for several reasons.
1. I wrote it down from memory, as I'm usually using Linux and only boot
Windows when I can't avoid to.
2. My Windows is all German, and although I was told that my
translations to english were correct, there might still be an error
there. I have seen a screenshot of the "Folder Options" dialog box,
so that's really its name, but the menu item might be called
differently.
3. This was for Windows XP, but I guess other versions of Windows might
have other versions of Explorer with different menu entries.

In case all else fails, you might well ask here on this forum about
where to find this dialog, for someone out there is bound to have the
same version of windows as you do and have located it.

Greetings,
Martin von Gagern

robert morris wrote:
Martin,

This is some time later than your post, however I have just started with the
verrry slow opening of 2007 excel spreadsheets. I'm running xp with Office
2007 upgrade.
I searched Discussion groups and found your reply. My problem is; Try as I
may, I cannot locate Menu item FOLDER OPTIONS (forgive the shouting) Could
you possibly start me from the beginning? It appears your fix works for all
who are smarter than me in getting to the right church.

Thanks in advance

Bob

"Martin von Gagern" wrote:
Does http://martin.von-gagern.net/howtos/excel2007load help?

Martin,

I too used your method, which worked well for a time, but now, it doesn't.

If I repair Office and/or completely uninstall and reinstall and make the
same changes of adding the "%1" and [rem see command line], to the
appropriate sections to the relevant file types, the problem is fixed again.
BUT the problem doesn't stay fixed!!! After a while, the same slow opening
of the file occurs when trying to open it from a shortcut if Excel is not
already open.
The unusual occurrence of double clicking an Excel shortcut, then minimizing
the Excel program also once used to be a fix, as Excel would automatically
maximize again and open the file. However, that doesn't even work any more
as the file is no longer being opened by that procedure.

Anything else to try?

Rob


"robert morris" wrote in message
...
Martin,

Beautiful!!

Excel sheets now open approx 20 times faster. Before, took 40-45 seconds,
now, 2 - seconds. Many thanks. Where is Microsoft on this one? I
suppose
they are busy repairing Vista and 2007.

Bob Morris


"Martin von Gagern" wrote:

Hi Robert!

I'm not sure whether this is going to help, but let's start from the
beginning.
1. Klick on the Start menu button in the lower left corner
2. Choose the Applications submenu and look for Windows Explorer
1.+2. Instead of 1. and 2. as described above, you may also press and
hold your Windows key and then press E
3. Now you should see an Explorer window,
and this window should have a menu bar
4. Choose the "Tools" menu
5. Look for anything remotely like "Folder Options"
6. Now you are ready for step 4. of my online instruction

This description can, however, be inaccurate for several reasons.
1. I wrote it down from memory, as I'm usually using Linux and only boot
Windows when I can't avoid to.
2. My Windows is all German, and although I was told that my
translations to english were correct, there might still be an error
there. I have seen a screenshot of the "Folder Options" dialog box,
so that's really its name, but the menu item might be called
differently.
3. This was for Windows XP, but I guess other versions of Windows might
have other versions of Explorer with different menu entries.

In case all else fails, you might well ask here on this forum about
where to find this dialog, for someone out there is bound to have the
same version of windows as you do and have located it.

Greetings,
Martin von Gagern

robert morris wrote:
Martin,

This is some time later than your post, however I have just started
with the
verrry slow opening of 2007 excel spreadsheets. I'm running xp with
Office
2007 upgrade.
I searched Discussion groups and found your reply. My problem is; Try
as I
may, I cannot locate Menu item FOLDER OPTIONS (forgive the shouting)
Could
you possibly start me from the beginning? It appears your fix works
for all
who are smarter than me in getting to the right church.

Thanks in advance

Bob

"Martin von Gagern" wrote:
Does http://martin.von-gagern.net/howtos/excel2007load help?

Hi Rob!

Did I get this right, that Excel is slow to start again after a while,
even though the fix still seems to be in place, i.e. the dialog still
shows the described modification?

You should check whether the command you edit is the command that gets
executed. Change it to something else entirely, e.g. Edit.exe or some
such. If it still opens Excel, then it's executing some other command,
but if it opens the other program but after changing back opening Excel
is still slow, then Excel became slow to open files given on the command
line as well.

If Excel is executing some different command, then you could look for
other file associations. Excel 2007 has quite a few formats, and while I
only described XLS, it might be that some of them use different
settings, and that your doubleclick triggerd one of these others.

If you suspect Excel is starting slow for command line arguments as
well, you might try to enter the whole command, with the actual file
name instead of %1, into a command line window. If that is slow as well,
then Microsoft really broke something even more, otherwise it might also
be Explorer being slow to decide whether Excel is running or not.

In any case, it would be interesting what kind of action makes the
system slow again. I suspect it could be some kind of automatic update.

Generally all of you should probably complain to your vendor or some
official Microsoft support contact if you can. My fix is a workaround,
for those annoyed enough to search and lucky enough to find help. A real
fix would be for everyone, distributed by Microsoft. So let them know
there is a problem.

Greetings,
Martin von Gagern

RobN wrote:
Martin,

I too used your method, which worked well for a time, but now, it doesn't.

If I repair Office and/or completely uninstall and reinstall and make the
same changes of adding the "%1" and [rem see command line], to the
appropriate sections to the relevant file types, the problem is fixed again.
BUT the problem doesn't stay fixed!!! After a while, the same slow opening
of the file occurs when trying to open it from a shortcut if Excel is not
already open.
The unusual occurrence of double clicking an Excel shortcut, then minimizing
the Excel program also once used to be a fix, as Excel would automatically
maximize again and open the file. However, that doesn't even work any more
as the file is no longer being opened by that procedure.

Anything else to try?

Rob