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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84 additional answers

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-06-21T00:19:58+00:00

    It issue is only with Excel. Other parts of Office are fine - Outlook, Word, PowerPoint. Other applications are also fine.

    My PC is just over a year old. Intel Core i5 3470 CPU @ 3.20 GHz, 8Gb Ram

    Using the Resource Monitor (the files are opening relatively fast today) I see only a momentary peak to about 50% of CPU usage when an Excel file opens and a static 25% RAM usage whether a file is opened or not.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-08-09T19:36:38+00:00

    I am experiencing identical symptoms under Windows 10 with Excel from Office 365.

    • Opening Excel by clicking on a file in File Explorer is slow
    • Opening Excel from the Start menu is fast
    • Opening a file from inside Excel is fast

    Noting that this is a local file, that is very small and has no formulas, and that other Office applications do not exhibit the problem.

    I tried the 3 solutions in this article so far:

    • I verified that the Superfetch was running (this is a Surface 3 Pro, and it shouldn't matter)
    • I tried the command change in the registry (suitably updated for my directory structure in Program Files) which amounted to changing /dde to "&1".
    • Using Open With and assigning Excel as the default.
    • I used the Windows 10 Choose Default Apps by File Types to verify that Excel (desktop) is the default app for the .xlsx file type.

    None of these helped.

    Further observations:

    • An .xls file has the same problem
    • If Excel is already open, opening another Excel file from the File Explorer is instant.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-08-12T00:24:39+00:00

    Yes, those are the exact problems and symptoms I have except I am using Windows 7 with 64-bit.

    And I tried the suggestions you had to no avil either. I am glad I am not the only one with this issue.

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-08-16T19:23:54+00:00

    I am the same as others and have also tried the suggested fixes - which didn't help.  Files opened quickly and correctly yesterday.  Open Excel, and then the file = very fast.  Double click the file directly, very slow.  Windows 10, Office 2013.

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