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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments No comments
Answer accepted by question author
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+

Was this answer helpful?

100+ people found this answer helpful.
0 comments No comments

84 additional answers

Sort by: Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2015-11-15T08:24:19+00:00

    Second that... it does now appear to be resolved.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2015-11-17T22:17:33+00:00

    Could it be then that it gets fixed if I apply Windows 10 upgrade to my present Win 7 Home then allow the Win 10 upgrade to happen, it will fix this issue? It was not always there, certainly not when Office was initially installed 18 months ago. I have been a little nervous about doing the upgrade to 10 at all. But it seems it will be forced at some point anyway.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2015-11-18T01:51:02+00:00

    No way to know if Windows 10 fixes the issue or not. I did not move to Windows 8.x, because I hated it.  I bought it, but just did not like it. Some say I was petty for not liking the start menu sucking up all 24" of my desktop screen, but as far as I was concerned, that was a huge irritant.  (That and the charms menu thing.)

    I moved to Windows 10 for the reasons you suggest near the end.  Eventually, we have to.  Technology keeps moving forward.  I did make the leap and it's been pretty good.  I had a few minor hiccups, but nothing I could not resolve with a little googling.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  4. Anonymous
    2016-03-18T07:22:38+00:00

    I had the exact same problem. No other solutions worked for me.

    Here is the work around I am using.

    1. Create a batch file c:\somefolder\open_excel.bat, with below content. You may need to change the path to excel.exe

    start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\EXCEL.EXE" %1%

    exit

    1. Now change open with for .xlsx and .xls file types to open_excel.bat
    2. [Optional] Now you may reset the excel icons for .xlsx and .xls file types:

     http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/12383/change-a-file-types-icon-in-windows-7/

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments