word files taking long time to open

[M K W]

Hello,
I have Office XP with SP-2 on win2000 Pro.

When I try to open some word documents that are located on a another server
on the network and in a couple of subfolders, it takes about 2 min to open a
small file. This problem suddenly occured, I thought it is a virus, but no.
I uninstalled Office and re-installed it again, but the problem still.

NB: If I opened MS Word, then I go to file open and brows the path, files
open very quickly.
I wonder what the problem is, but any help would be highly appreciated.
thank you

 

[Word Heretic]

G'day "M K W" <[email protected]>,

Using network-based templates usually causes this. It gets especially
bad if a document is referring to a template that isn't present as
Word starts searching all the valid dirs - including the network ones.


Steve Hudson - Word Heretic
Want a hyperlinked index? S/W R&D? See WordHeretic.com

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M K W reckoned:

 

[M K W]

HI,
Thank you for your reply, well I think that I am using a template, but is
there any way to fix this?
thanx

 

[Word Heretic]

G'day "M K W" <[email protected]>,

The easiest solution is to change your setup so networked templates
are located on each machine via an SOE rollout or similar. You then
change the attached templates to their local equivalents. However
these paths are embedded in our existing Word files (created from
networked templates), so you really need to recreate these documents
(if you are lucky just a simple copy everything bar the last para mark
in each section of each document to a new document vreated from a
local template) will do it for you.

To be practical, you only need to rebuild those dox that show lag on
open.

Additionally, with severe network problems (flukes, not necc anything
wrong with the setup) you should copy remote files local before
editing.


Steve Hudson - Word Heretic
Want a hyperlinked index? S/W R&D? See WordHeretic.com

steve from wordheretic.com (Email replies require payment)


M K W reckoned:

 

[Margaret Aldis]

There is a way to automate this - you need to place a template with the same
name as the missing network template in the user or workgroup templates
folder, and include an AutoOpen macro that attaches the active document to
the replacement template. If the filenames are the same, I believe you may
need to attach to Normal, then make the attachment you really want,
otherwise the original path is kept intact.

This may not purge all reference to the original template, but it was enough
to stop slow opening when it happened to us back with Word 97 and Windows
2000. (The culprit in that case was not Word, which was finding a same-name
template in the (local) templates folder or substituting Normal without
fuss, but the virus scanner was insisting on looking everywhere for the
original template. However, I think Word 2002 has changed the pecking order
on templates, which may be why the network delays now occur.) Obviously you
have to save the file to lock in the new path, so it doesn't solve the
problem for archived files that cannot be changed, but luckily those don't
usually get opened much.