Opening excel file directly is very slow

Anonymous
2013-02-26T12:25:10+00:00

I can open Excel directly and it launches immediately - not an issue.

I can launch Excel directly and then open a file - it opens the file immediately.

However if I open a file directly - without previously launching excel - it takes a long time - 30 to 40s.

I have tried many suggestions found online but none help. Does anyone have any ideas please?

Win 7 64 Bit

Office 2010

Thanks

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2013-03-02T00:50:36+00:00

Solved.......I worked it out from searching the internet.

The issue is Superfetch. Mine was switched off.

As soon as it was turned on from Regedit followed by me starting it in Services - it works perfectly!

Here is the text from the solution....

I found this on Technipages website:

Mitch wrote:

"Superfetch caches data to RAM so that it can be immediately available to your application. Sometimes this can affect the performance of certain applications. It tends to not work well with gaming, but can improve performance with business apps.

To modify whether Superfetch is enabled or disabled, you can perform the following steps:

  1. Click the Start orb and type REGEDIT in the Start Search area.
  2. Open the Registry Editor.
  3. Click the plus sign next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

then SYSTEM

then CurrentControlSet

then Control

then Session Manager

then MemoryManagement ****then click PrefetchParameters

  1. On the right side, double-click on EnableSuperfetch
  2. Give it one of the following values:

0 to disable Superfetch

1 to enable prefetching when program is launched

2 to enable boot prefetching

3 to enable prefectching of everything

Hit OK then Close RegEdit. "

Then goto the services MSC ("windows key + r" or just "windows key" and type services.msc). Scroll down to Superfetch and now should start. Click Start on the left info pane or double click it and change to automatic, then attempt to start again.

For informational purposes I chose the 4th option to enable prefetching for everything.

Hope this helps.

A.J. Silverman

MCSE+I, MCP, A+

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-01-07T01:32:17+00:00

    Solved.......I worked it out from searching the internet.

    The issue is Superfetch. Mine was switched off.

    As soon as it was turned on from Regedit followed by me starting it in Services - it works perfectly!

    Here is the text from the solution....

    I found this on Technipages website:

    Mitch wrote:

    "Superfetch caches data to RAM so that it can be immediately available to your application. Sometimes this can affect the performance of certain applications. It tends to not work well with gaming, but can improve performance with business apps.

    To modify whether Superfetch is enabled or disabled, you can perform the following steps:

    1. Click the Start orb and type REGEDIT in the Start Search area.
    2. Open the Registry Editor.
    3. Click the plus sign next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

    then SYSTEM

    then CurrentControlSet

    then Control

    then Session Manager

    then MemoryManagement ****then click PrefetchParameters

    1. On the right side, double-click on EnableSuperfetch
    2. Give it one of the following values:

    0 to disable Superfetch

    1 to enable prefetching when program is launched

    2 to enable boot prefetching

    3 to enable prefectching of everything

    Hit OK then Close RegEdit. "

    Then goto the services MSC ("windows key + r" or just "windows key" and type services.msc). Scroll down to Superfetch and now should start. Click Start on the left info pane or double click it and change to automatic, then attempt to start again.

    For informational purposes I chose the 4th option to enable prefetching for everything.

    Hope this helps.

    A.J. Silverman

    MCSE+I, MCP, A+

    Going through all these steps I find that everything is already set correctly so it makes no difference. Starting Excel 2013 by double clicking a file or by clicking Start>Excel 2013>myexcelfile.xlsx is still very slow indeed at opening - probably 30 seconds. Opening a file from within already opened Excel is nearly instant.

    Surely Microsoft could come up with a fix. By the way my Excel 2013 installation used to be fine opening Excel from a Excel file.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-12-22T23:04:07+00:00

    After searching some more, I found a solution modifying the registry. A bit dirty, but it seems to work:

    1. Change the (default) value of the following key:

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\command]

    to:

    "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\EXCEL.EXE" "%1"

    1. Remove or backup the command subkey
    2. Remove or backup the ddexec key

    Note: Office 2010 is in the Office14 folder instead of the Office15 folder, if I'm not mistaken.

    After these changes, my [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open] registry key looks as follows - you can save this as a .reg file and run it (export yours first!)

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open]

    @="&Open"

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\command]

    @=""C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\EXCEL.EXE" "%1""

    "command.bck"=hex(7):79,00,68,00,31,00,42,00,56,00,35,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,\

    00,34,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,4d,00,4b,00,4b,00,53,00,6b,00,45,00,58,00,\

    43,00,45,00,4c,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,3e,00,4f,00,66,00,31,00,52,\

    00,44,00,3f,00,49,00,39,00,62,00,39,00,6a,00,5b,00,32,00,68,00,4c,00,5d,00,\

    4b,00,68,00,4f,00,26,00,00,00,2f,00,70,00,20,00,22,00,43,00,3a,00,5c,00,50,\

    00,72,00,6f,00,67,00,72,00,61,00,6d,00,20,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,\

    5c,00,4d,00,69,00,63,00,72,00,6f,00,73,00,6f,00,66,00,74,00,20,00,4f,00,66,\

    00,66,00,69,00,63,00,65,00,5c,00,4f,00,66,00,66,00,69,00,63,00,65,00,31,00,\

    35,00,5c,00,45,00,58,00,43,00,45,00,4c,00,2e,00,45,00,58,00,45,00,22,00,20,\

    00,22,00,25,00,31,00,22,00,00,00,00,00

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec.bck]

    @="[open("%1" /ou "%u")]"

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec.bck\application]

    @="Excel"

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec.bck\topic]

    @="system"

    This fixed my issue. Big thanks!

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-10-01T06:12:30+00:00

    Activate your leftmost sheet. Use CTRL-PageDown to move through the sheets from left to right, one sheet at a time. As each sheets displays, note the height of the vertical scroll bar. If the height is around 1 or 2 mm, it means the sheet has the maximum number of rows it it (which is over a million). This is the sheet causing the problem.

    The solution is to create a new sheet and copy the required contents of the offending sheet to the new sheet. Delete the offending sheet and rename the new sheet to the name of the sheet you just deleted. Note that you will have to recreate any formula in other sheets that linked to the offending sheet. Just search for the #REFs. Close and save the workbook and then reopen it.

    You may have to repeat the above for all of the sheets and then repeat it but this time looking at the horizontal scroll bars.

    I Just performed this fix on my workbook and it changed the time to open from 70 seconds to less than 5.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-11-05T11:00:37+00:00

    After searching some more, I found a solution modifying the registry. A bit dirty, but it seems to work:

    1. Change the (default) value of the following key:

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\command]

    to:

    "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\EXCEL.EXE" "%1"

    1. Remove or backup the command subkey
    2. Remove or backup the ddexec key

    Note: Office 2010 is in the Office14 folder instead of the Office15 folder, if I'm not mistaken.

    After these changes, my [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open] registry key looks as follows - you can save this as a .reg file and run it (export yours first!)

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open]

    @="&Open"

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\command]

    @=""C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\EXCEL.EXE" "%1""

    "command.bck"=hex(7):79,00,68,00,31,00,42,00,56,00,35,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,\

    00,34,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,21,00,4d,00,4b,00,4b,00,53,00,6b,00,45,00,58,00,\

    43,00,45,00,4c,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,3e,00,4f,00,66,00,31,00,52,\

    00,44,00,3f,00,49,00,39,00,62,00,39,00,6a,00,5b,00,32,00,68,00,4c,00,5d,00,\

    4b,00,68,00,4f,00,26,00,00,00,2f,00,70,00,20,00,22,00,43,00,3a,00,5c,00,50,\

    00,72,00,6f,00,67,00,72,00,61,00,6d,00,20,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,\

    5c,00,4d,00,69,00,63,00,72,00,6f,00,73,00,6f,00,66,00,74,00,20,00,4f,00,66,\

    00,66,00,69,00,63,00,65,00,5c,00,4f,00,66,00,66,00,69,00,63,00,65,00,31,00,\

    35,00,5c,00,45,00,58,00,43,00,45,00,4c,00,2e,00,45,00,58,00,45,00,22,00,20,\

    00,22,00,25,00,31,00,22,00,00,00,00,00

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec.bck]

    @="[open("%1" /ou "%u")]"

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec.bck\application]

    @="Excel"

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\ddeexec.bck\topic]

    @="system"

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