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Office 2008 Slow Startup: SOLVED!

J

jbrill

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 31, 2008
4
1
Vancouver
Hey,
I just posted this fix in another thread, but thought it deserved it's own.
Many of you have been having problems with very slow startup times with Office 2008.

My word/excel/powerpoint used to take about 1+ minutes to load.

It seems as though the office programs hang on startup due to 2 reasons.
The first being the auto start up of the project gallery and the second is the way it renders the preview of fonts(I use "Font Book" to preview my fonts anyhow.).

Here is how to fix it:

1. Launch word
2. Go to Word>Preferences
3. Click on "General"
4. uncheck "WYSIWYG font and style menus"
5. uncheck "Show Project Gallery At Startup"
6. Quit word
7. Reopen Word

My office programs now boot in 4 seconds or less and run smoothly.

Your Welcome :)

You can also view my blog for a more information http://bbold.com/blog/?p=7
 
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jbrill said:
Hey,
I just posted this fix in another thread, but thought it deserved it's own.
Many of you have been having problems with very slow startup times with Office 2008.

My word/excel/powerpoint used to take about 1+ minutes to load.
Click to expand...


Other then Word, which takes 10-15 sec first time around, the rest of the apps start up snappily out of the box (i.e., with default preference settings) on my Mac Pro.
 
You are one of the lucky ones! It seems like the problems only happen to some (but most) of the computers.

It definitely has something to do with the fonts, do u have any extra fonts installed?
 
Gonna try this when I get home...the ridiculously slow start-up times have left me longing for Office '04 running under Rosetta!! Just to be clear, I'll ask a dumb question: unchecking these two items only needs to be done via Word prefs, and it will also speed up Excel, etc.?
 
as far as fonts go yes, u only need to uncheck it in word however i believe the "project gallery" must be unchecked in all of the programs.

It is the font's that slow it down the most though
 
jbrill said:
as far as fonts go yes, u only need to uncheck it in word however i believe the "project gallery" must be unchecked in all of the programs.

It is the font's that slow it down the most though
Click to expand...

Huh... "project gallery" was NOT even checked by default for me, though fonts was... Gonna re-boot my MBP this weekend (for the first time in a couple weeks) & see if this fix survives a re-boot...(does that even make sense?)
 
jbrill said:
Here is how to fix it:

1. Launch word
2. Go to Word>Preferences
3. Click on "General"
4. uncheck "WYSIWYG font and style menus"
5. uncheck "Show Project Gallery At Startup"
6. Quit word
7. Reopen Word

My office programs now boot in 4 seconds or less and run smoothly.
Click to expand...
Do they still load in 4 seconds the first time you launch them after a reboot (when they're not cached in memory)?

Using your workflow above, when you quit Word and then reopen it, Mac OS X still has it cached in memory, so it'll reopen extremely quick (as it doesn't have to pull data from the hard drive).
 
Thanks JBril!!

Thanks man/gal that totally help shorten the time on booting up office 2004 suite... even though I stick to iWork 08' most of the time :).
 
This is an old thread. Office 2008 isn't the fastest of all apps, but it's okay to me. I don't bust out Word for a simple essay or research paper. I use TextEdit for the quick note or Pages when I'm doing something to catch my teacher's eye.
 
SnowLeopard2008 said:
This is an old thread. Office 2008 isn't the fastest of all apps, but it's okay to me. I don't bust out Word for a simple essay or research paper. I use TextEdit for the quick note or Pages when I'm doing something to catch my teacher's eye.
Click to expand...

So when the hell would you use Word then? Super-long essays? For me, essays ARE the cause for needing Word, cause Pages doesn't cut it for real writing, as opposed to fancy Pages-style documents.
 
01jamcon said:
So when the hell would you use Word then? Super-long essays? For me, essays ARE the cause for needing Word, cause Pages doesn't cut it for real writing, as opposed to fancy Pages-style documents.
Click to expand...

I only use Word when I absolutely have to (and mostly, its to put things into .docx, because one of my teachers is incredibly anal about file format). Pages can do APA/MLA just fine for me.
 
I don't have "Show Project Gallery At Startup" checked, but I do have "WYSIWYG font and style menus" checked, since I use that feature all the time. I can launch Word, Excel and Powerpoint simultaneously and all 3 open in 2-4 seconds.
 
Old tip based on an old build of 2008.
Folks saying it loads in sub 4 seconds aren't doing so from a cold boot unfortunately.
 
excel still slow 08

thanks word now opens in a flash how to fix excel&entourage
 
jbrill said:
Hey,
I just posted this fix in another thread, but thought it deserved it's own.
Many of you have been having problems with very slow startup times with Office 2008.

My word/excel/powerpoint used to take about 1+ minutes to load.

It seems as though the office programs hang on startup due to 2 reasons.
The first being the auto start up of the project gallery and the second is the way it renders the preview of fonts(I use "Font Book" to preview my fonts anyhow.).

Here is how to fix it:

1. Launch word
2. Go to Word>Preferences
3. Click on "General"
4. uncheck "WYSIWYG font and style menus"
5. uncheck "Show Project Gallery At Startup"
6. Quit word
7. Reopen Word

My office programs now boot in 4 seconds or less and run smoothly.

Your Welcome :)

You can also view my blog for a more information http://bbold.com/blog/?p=7
Click to expand...
thanks word now opens in a flash can you fix excel& entourage so they open has quick as word
cheers
 
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