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Excel slow for one user on a computer

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by lmayeda 1 view

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I have a multi-user computer on the network. For some reason, it takes forever to open any Excel spreadsheet for one of the user profiles. If I make all users PC Administrators, I can open the same spreadsheets from another profile on the same PC with no problem. I have nevertheless uninstalled office and reinstalled it. The Excel documents are on the local PC. I had gone through the HKLM and HKLU registry entries for the start up programs and deleted what I deemed to be non-essential. Yesterday's McAfee scan was clean and I had also run a couple of rootkit search programs that yielded nothing. I have yet to transfer all of her files to another PC, delete her profile and rebuild it. When I watch the Task Manager Processes tab (with no other applications open), its slow to load Excel and even after Excel is loaded, it's slow to open additional Excel spreadsheets. Any ideas would be appreciated.

13 replies

by stealthwifi

So this is on a single local PC and only effecting one user of that PC?

Is the Excel file stored locally or on a file share?

If locally under this users profile or another?

Are all the users including this one Admin?

If not what is this users rights on the PC and others that do not experiance the problum?

If you copy the Excel file to another PC and setup an account for the user on that PC and let the user open the file is it the same response? Are you watching the user open it and experiance the slowness?

Does the Excel file have any links to any other Excel file or data at all?

If yes does the user have proper permissions to the area where the other data is stored? Even if the data is not used by the user it can still slow the crap out of Excel.

I would first check to make sure ther are no links to or from that Excel doc and if so the user has proper permissions for it first.

Cheers,

by lmayeda

This is for a single user on a network PC, affecting only 1 of the users of that PC.
Excel file is stored locally and under this user's profile.
I changed all users to be PC administrators so I could try opening files across profiles.
After creating the user's profile on another PC and copying over her MY DOCUMENTS, access to those Excel files were instant.
I have logged on as that user and experienced the slowness. I've also watched it with Task Manager open to see if any other process was using up memory... no.
I don't know if the the excel file had links to other excel files. If she does not have proper permissions ... would it open? The file does eventually open ... but it is SLOW. Thanks for the clue. I will look at it more closely and will probably just delete her profile and recreate it.

by stealthwifi

The doc probably has stale links or links somehwere in it that are dragging down the connection (could also be a macro trying to load)

Yes it would open even if it had links in it where the permissions are wrong or even linking to a document that doesn't exist anymore.

Since it worked fine on another PC using the exact same user it does sound like her profile was corrupted. It happen unfortaunatly but a remove and recreate should fix it.

Cheers,

by shasca

If as you say it appears to be profile specific. You can save the My documents,Desktop,and Favorites folder contenets, and then just delete that profile. It will generate a new one the then copy back folder contents. login Unless you are using local accounts, in which case you could create another.

by lmayeda

I would like to know what could cause this type of slowdown for 1 user profile and not another. I did notice that this user has 880MG of music in her My Documents making her profile size about 1.1gb. Could this have any bearing? There is still a lot of free space and the hard drive does not require defragging. Thanks for your response.

by stealthwifi

I currently have a profile on one PC of 816Mb without any problums.

Off the top of my head I can't think of how size would adversely affect it. Unless it get's absolutely huge.

Cheers,

by shasca

I doubt My documents has any affect on the Excel issue. There is probably corruption in one of the system folders. I would suspect the Application Data folder.

by stealthwifi

I hate it when people post a link to Experts Exchange as an answer, what if the person asking doesn't have an account with them and want to pay to set one up. Just post the answer they provided unless you yourself don't have an account and are just posting the link.

Cheers,

by rubmop

The link to Experts Exchange opens the answer. I don't know if you bothered to read it or not but in my case adding "%1" to the Open string is the correct answer. I found this solution all over the net shortly after I installed Office 2007 on our users( all XP ). My machine and only one other had the same problem. I can't find the common bug.My problem is after some patch Tuesdays thanks to Office patches it resets to default I have to re-do the fix.I would like to know the root cause of this problem and why can't the solution come from Microsoft?

by ---tk---

There is a stupid file C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\normal.dot

If this file becomes corrupt it will slow/mess things up big time. If you ever find the the menu word "File" or "Edit" (up top) missing replace this file. It also affects alot of other weird issues too... I might try and replace it with one thats working fine.

Also to rule out more stuff. Create her profile on another machine, and test it out there. If it opens fine then its probably the machine. If not it might be a permissions issue. like another poster stated.

by davidj2

Weird. I created a new user account (XP PRO) and an Excel file on the network takes about a minute to open. Same computer, different/old user account opens it in seconds.

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