Office 2008 apps are very slow to start sinceupgrading to Snow Leopard

[treborito]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I performed an upgrade from 10.5.8 to 10.6 (not a clean install). I am running the latest version of Office 2008 12.2.1. Previously Entourage, Excel and Powerpoint would boot up incredibly fast (2-3 seconds). Now it takes up to 25-30 seconds before they finish starting up. Word boots up quickly but take about 30 seconds of spinning beach ball before I can type anything. Is anyone else experiencing similar slow-down issues since upgrading?

I wondering if there are too many fonts installed.

I am running a 8-core 3.2 Intel.

 

[codywilliams]

Snow Leopard came in the mail for me yesterday. However, since I have websites in my iWeb application on my MacBook, I am waiting to upgrade my Leopard to Snow Leopard until September 30th. This is so that Apple can get any bugs out of it that are doing wonders to different things. How many total fonts are installed? You can check this in the "Font Book" application in the Finder.

 

[Diane Ross]

I wondering if there are too many fonts installed.

There are font issues after updating to Snow Leopard. Apple installs some
newer fonts that Microsoft uses. You need to run font book repair and get
rid of some duplicates.The slowness could be rebuilding your fonts.

For anyone that is following this and hasn't upgraded to Snow Leopard yet,
but sure to clear Font caches while still booted in Leopard. Some utilities
like Onyx do not work in Snow Leopard yet.

New fonts installed by Snow Leopard:

Andale Mono
Arial
Arial Black
Arial Narrow
Arial Rounded Bold
Brush Script.ttf
Comic Sans MS
Georgia
Impact
Tahoma
Times New Roman
Trebuchet MS
Verdana
Wingdings 2
Wingdings 3

 

[treborito]

Thanks for the response Diane. I had already removed the duplicates using Fontbook to no avail. I also removed the font cache using a Unix command line. It actually appears slower now. It's taking about 1 minute to launch Excel. And about 30 seconds to launch Entourage. There must be something else going on here

 

[Diane Ross]

Thanks for the response Diane. I had already removed the duplicates using
Fontbook to no avail. I also removed the font cache using a Unix command line.
It actually appears slower now. It's taking about 1 minute to launch Excel.
And about 30 seconds to launch Entourage. There must be something else going
on here

Testing in a new User will quickly tell you if the problem is system wide or
if it¹s your User¹s folder that contains the problem.

Go to System Preferences --> Create a New User in Accounts. Switch to the
New User by logging out/in or use Fast User Switching. Try launching Office
applications in the new User. Is it faster?

If you still are having problems, search for the word "slow" on this link:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/troubleshoot/crashes.html>

Until we get more info on Snow Leopard we won't know if there is some
specific fix that's needed.

 

[treborito]

Diane, I tried your suggestion and it is considerably faster but still much slower than it was in Leopard. Right after booting my Mac Pro desktop, it takes about 15-20 seconds to launch Excel. Now if I quit Excel, and then relaunch it, it takes only 4-5 seconds.

Please note, that prior to doing the new user test, I had disabled most of the fonts in Font Book which increased the opening speed for all of the Office 2008 apps substantially. However, in Leopard, this wasn't necessary.

On another note, I installed SL on my MacBook with only minor slowness issues. Still slower than Leopard but not to the degree I am experiencing on my Mac Pro.

 

[Diane Ross]

Right after booting my Mac Pro desktop, it takes about 15-20 seconds to
launch Excel. Now if I quit Excel, and then relaunch it, it takes only 4-5
seconds.

This has been documented in the articles I've read on Snow Leopard, but it
seems there is something on this one particular computer that is causing it
to be slower than your other one. Compare the Mac Book to the Pro. I bet the
difference could be in the hardware.

 

[treborito]

Thanks for the response. As these Office programs aren't very processor intensive, I'm not sure what it could be to make the Mac Pro desktop require more time to launch the software than the MacBook other than fonts. I seriously think there is something more fundamental going on here (as I said previously, prior to installing Snow Leopard) they launched much faster on both machines.

 

[Albert_C]

My Excel 2008 (build 12.2.1) is lagging after upgrading to Snow Leopard. Lagging occurs when I scroll up and down a spreadsheet, highlight cells and insert text/cell.

I am able to replicate this with my iMac and Macbook Air.

 

[Albert_C]

Further to my post, it does appear that the Excel's Page Layout view is lagging with Snow Leopard. I have now changed to Normal view and everything is working flawlessly once again.

 

[treborito]

After disabling most of my fonts via Font Book, the apps now seem to launch fairly quickly (5 seconds) on my Mac Pro 8-core. Still, not what I would expect running Snow Leopard (They launched faster in Leopard with well over 100 fonts installed).