Visio 2013 VERY slow

Hi All,

I can confirm there does seem to be some features in the latest version of Visio 2013 which may seem slow to function - the following features have been noticed:

1. 'More Shapes' - Slow to open

When selecting 'more shapes'  - this can take 20-30 seconds to open before a text box allows the selection of shapes to be opened.  This should be instantaneous.

Why is this slow?

It looks like Visio attempts to read all the shapes in the 'My Shapes' folder which contains user-defined stencil shapes that are on a users drive before allowing this menu box to be opened.

How do I know this?

I have used Resource Monitor to tracked the disk activity Visio.exe 2013 generates - and a user selects 'more shapes'.  It will use Windows Search to quickly read all the file-names that are stored in the users 'My Shapes' directory instead of from the local files directly.  

What used to happen? (Visio 2010 workaround)

The 'My Shapes' directory (user defined) was not read unless a user selected 'my shapes' in visio at which point it would run slowly and often freeze on machines with lots of custom stencils.  The workaround was to select, file open -> 'my stencil' and select the stencil file directly and the system would work quickly.

Who is this likely to affect?

People with a lot of custom stencil shapes.

I currently have about ~480 stencil shape files in My Shapes (1.1GB) this can now take a long time to add stencil shapes to a diagram ready for use.  I need to add another 600 or so stencil shapes to this folder and right now I may move these to a different location so I can open a custom stencil faster without Visio searching for all available stencil files in the 'My Shapes' folder.

Suggested Fix:

Allow the 'More Shapes' initial menu expansion to open instantly so a user can navigate to the 'open stencil file' without requiring additional disk IO to catalogue all the user-defined shapes that may be saved in their 'My Shapes' folder.  Defer the reading of the 'my shapes' data to a background process so Visio 2013 does not freeze.

2)  Auto-Save/Save - slow with large files (Visio 2010/2013)

This often has a habit of saving files when users are trying to make edits on a document. 

Visio 2010 did not have auto-save enabled as default.

Visio 2013 has auto-saved enabled by default (every 10 mins).

I am not arguing that auto-save by default enabled is a good or bad option - but the impact can be quite severe to a user editing a diagram.

How?

When editing a large visio diagram (13MB for example) this can take significant time to save the file.

This often will appear as if the system has frozen whilst the file is being saved.

Suggested Fix:

Implement a 'background' snapshot auto-save/save function without affecting the current work a user is performing.  Keep an in-memory delta of what is being worked on so the user-experience is smooth without any freezes in Visio.

3. Auto-Expanding / Growing Visio files

This problem has plagued Visio 2010 & Visio 2013:

Symptom:    Visio does not auto-clean-up objects in a file and a file grows bigger after every edit.

                     This can lead to slow performance with a file that has had many edits.

How to replicate: Add lots of custom objects with custom spaces to a file.

                            Save the file - look at the file-size (e.g. version 1: This is now 2Mb)

                            Delete 2/3 of all the shapes/objects added to the file.

                            Save the file - with a different name (e.g. version 2: This is now 1.99Mb)

                            Delete ALL shapes/objects added to the file including closing custom stencils.

                            Save the file - with a different name (e.g. version 3: This is now 1.98Mb)

                                    -- This file is approx. as big as the version 1 file even though it contains no edits/stencils in the file.  This is not good.

Workaround:

a)  Copy/Paste all the data from a Visio sheet into a new visio file.

OR

b) Go File -> Reduce File Size (remove all items that are no longer required).

Then save the file.  The file size will be a lot smaller and easier to work with.

Why is this a problem?

  * It takes a long time to re-open the custom stencils to a new file/worksheet.

Suggested Improvements:

Automatically 'clean-up' information not required in a visio file and compact the file-space required.

The 'reduce file size' tool does not correctly estimate the file reduction size that will be achieved.

I reduced the 13Mb File -> 31KB. The 'reduce file size' function only reported an estimated file-saving of 50-160Kb (of the 13Mb File) when it would get saved. 

The estimates of the 'reduce file size' feature needs to be improved in a later version to correctly allow users to see what portion of a visio file is taking up all the space and the estimated file-size that will be saved.

If anyone else notices any more features (or 'bugs') please let Microsoft know.

Thanks,

D

Same here... very slow in many aspect­s.  I think using back Visio 2010.

I've switched back to 2010 and the performance is MUCH better.

It is a “feature”not a“bug”**

I noticed the same sort of issues in Excel 2013.  I found the solution was to turn off 2013 "Animation".  I strongly suspect that you are having issues with that feature:

Rubber band effect, delayed Response time when typing – Disable Animation feature

In Office 2013 MS added a funky new UI feature called “Animation”. It is supposed to “smooth out”, or some such nonsense, cursor movement in the applications. I first noticed it in Excel 2013. I found it so annoying that that “feature” alone was enough to completely turn me off from using the whole Office 2013 bundle. Fortunately, or not (?), I found these fixes.

http://winsupersite.com/article/office-2013-beta2/office-2013-tip-disable-animations-143779

http://www.withinwindows.com/2012/07/21/disabling-animations-in-office-2013/

Note, you may have to also add the “Graphics” key.

*************

Alternate, related solution

I'm using Windows 8, and found a different solution there:

• Using the search-word "edit", I found "Edit system environment variables".
• That took me to the "System Properties" screen.
• Under "Performance" I selected "Settings", which brought up the "Performance Settings" screen.
• I deselected the "Animate controls and elements inside Windows" option.
• After restarting the computer, I brought up Excell, and it was totally fixed.

But effect related to this topic is not related on delayed responce while typing, it happens on zoom in/out and shapes move inside draw.

Tried all of your suggested fixes via regedit and Performance Settings - nothing helped, still slow.