Why has Word become so lethargic?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mary
  • Start date Start date
M

Mary

I'm using Word 2003 on Windows XP. For the last few days I've noticed it's
extremely slow to open any document in Word. These are documents stored on
my local harddrive. Normally I would double-click on a filename and it would
open in a matter of seconds. Now it takes at least a minute for even the
simplest document and much longer for larger documents. I've just done a
test by creating a new document from Normal.dot, just typed a single short
sentence, saved it and closed it. I double-clicked to open it but it took 70
seconds to open this mini document. When I opened the same document from
within Word using File ->Open, the same file opened in one or two seconds.

This is happening with Excel and PowerPoint documents too, but since I
mostly work with Word and open many documents in the course of the day, I
find this behavior really bothersome.

Any suggestions?
 
Hi Mary

Are you saying that when you open a document from Windows Explorer, it takes
a long time, but when you open it from Word, it opens quickly? If so, you
may need to re-register the file associations.

To do that, do Start > Run. In the box type
winword /r
and click OK.

Nothing will appear to happen, but Word will have re-registered itself as
the program in charge of .doc files. Then try again, and see if it makes a
difference.

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word
 
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