Graphic not found timeout

[Andrew Oliner]

I have kind of an odd question.

My company created a series of policy documents in Word '02. In order to
show that each doc was approved by me, each doc has a page header which
contains a link to a graphic file, my signature, which is only accessible to
me. So if a document was PDFed or printed, and you can see my signature, it
was done by me personally. Drafts created by my subordinates just showed the
"graphic unavailable" placeholder instead.

It worked very well, until we upgraded to Word '07. Now, when my subordinate
opens the document Word freezes for 20 to 40 seconds, and displays this
message in the status bar: "Contacting the server for information. Press ESC
to cancel."

Even worse, it does this EVERY TIME it has to repaint the screen, or move
from one page to another!

Is there any way to fix this? The only thing that I have come up with is to
turn on Picture Placeholders, which is a little overkill.

Btw, these files are still in Word '02-'03 Format, not in docx.

Andy

 

[Andrew Oliner]

Bump. I really need help with this.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP on news.microsoft.com]

If you think that because your signature can be seen, that it was inserted
by you personally, you are deluding yourself.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com

 

[Andrew Oliner]

Well, actually I do, because it's a link to a graphic file, not an embedded
graphic, and the file is on my private share. Other than the
Word-takes-forever-to-timeout issue, it works very well.

In any event, I still need help turning off the graphics search timeout, or
at least shortening the timeout period. That is the real issue, not the
validity of my simple document authentication scheme.

Andy

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP on news.microsoft.com]

If you send me a .pdf of one of your documents, I will send you back another
document that bears your signature.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com

 

[Andrew Oliner]

I'm not making myself clear. I just want to shorten or eliminate the
searching-for-the-graphic timeout that Word imposes when you try to edit a
document with a linked graphic that Word can't find.

Andy

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP on news.microsoft.com]

It is an issue that has been reported to Microsoft and has been acknowledged
as an issue.

The only work around is to have the graphic stored on the local machine.
But I guess that will "blow" you security (mis)conception.

Here is part of my reporting of the issue to Microsoft

Quote

To test this situation, I created two identical Word documents, each of
which contained 100 links to a single cell in an Excel Workbook where for
one document, the Excel Workbook was saved on a network drive and for the
other the Workbook was saved on the C:\ drive.

The document with the links to the workbook saved on the C:\ drive opens
without delay. That with the links to the workbook on the network drive
takes 25 seconds before the hourglass disappeared.

Here is a link to a website where the following description of a more
dramatic example of the problem is given

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/31747226/word-2007-opens-slowly-wh.aspx

Quote

Word 2007 Opens Slowly When Updating Excel Links on a Network Driv - glen
28-Feb-08 11:41:08

Word 2007 behaves differently when updating links to an Excel document
located on a mapped network drive, depending on whether the Excel document
is
already open when the links are updated.

In my specific test using a 1 page word document containing 22 Excel links
to one spreadsheet to pull in single cell data items like company name,
client name, address, etc:

With Excel doc open: 2 seconds response time
With Excel doc closed: 83 seconds response time

Using Filemon for Windows, it is clear the Excel spreadsheet is being opened
and closed excessively in the second test case:

With Excel doc open: 42 "Open" Operations and 21 "Close" operations
reported

With Excel doc closed: 3,024 "Open" Operations and 1,492 "Close" operations
reported. In addition, "Buffer Overflow" is reported 294 times. Evidence
gathered by visual observation via Windows Explorer (looking at the network
directory where the Excel file is located) indicates a backup copy of the
Excel file (i.e. ~$filename.xls) is also being created and deleted, over and
over during this operation.

Overall, the Filemon output report was just over a page long in the 1st test
case and 109 pages in the 2nd case.

I've recreated this problem in different network environments. The
documents used are not complex. I can share the sample documents and
Filemon
log to anyone who wants to see for themself.

This problem does NOT occur when using Office XP and only occurs if the
Excel workbook is located on a mapped network (not local) drive. Something
is seriously wrong and we cannot move our process to Office 2007 until it
can
be corrected.

I would think other people who rely on Word/Excel links must be seeing the
same problem? This is a huge issue for companies that produce reports that
rely heavily on Word/Excel links. Any thoughts out there?
--
G. Almcrantz
Tampa, FL

Unquote

There is another series of messages about the issue at:

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-7343-0.html?forumID=101&threadID=245533&start=0




Unquote

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com

 

[Andrew Oliner]

Okay, thanks. At least now I know that I can stop looking for a solution.

Andy