Word 2003 is taking 25 seconds to open a small 22k document

[JerryAustin]

Since moving to word 2003 it is taking 25 seconds to open documents. Docs
are on a network but an word 2000 machine on the same network with a lower
spec opens them instantaneously. Virus disabled makes no dif, adobe addin no
dif, they also open instantly using notepad
Any suggestions/ ideas

 

[Larraine W]

See discussion thread here starting on 9/3/2004 (approx. page 308), topic:
"Slow opening doc. "Word is finishing analyzing..." There are lots of us
experiencing the same thing, and I posted a workaround, but no fix.

 

[JerryAustin]

That seems to entail, if i ngot bthe correct thread, exporting the doc etc
etc not really a solution when we are opening hundreds of docs each day.
Does noone know what word 2003 or is it Xp is doing ?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The usual reason for this is that the document has an attached template that
is not available because it has been deleted or moved. When you are not
connected to the network, the document will open quickly because Word
searches only the local drive before giving up. When it has the entire
network to search, this takes longer. There is really no way around the slow
opening the first time, but once you get the document open, go to Tools |
Templates and Add-ins and change the attached template. If the original
template has merely been moved, navigate to its new location. If it no
longer exists, attach Normal.dot instead, making sure that "Automatically
update document styles" is *not* checked.

 

[JerryAustin]

I think you are exactly correct. By doing what you suggest the word
documents open instantly. However I have '000's of documents created by a
template that no longer exists at the location it was created. That was a
server which no longer exits and the location is referred to as
"\\defunctservername\folder\folder\etcetc - i dont suppose there is any way
of globally make a change.
However at least we can stop the rot by not copying new letters from old
with manually making the change.
Thanks very much - its taken days to get here

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The least painful way to handle the problem, I gather, is to temporarily
recreate the defunct path to facilitate opening the docs and making the
change, but it sounds as if this might not be possible in your case. There
are ways to access the document properties without opening the file, but I
vaguely recall that the attached template may not be one of the properties
that's accessible this way. FWIW, see
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/macrosvba/DSOFile.htm