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
    2017-05-03T17:26:24+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

    ...

    Solves the issue, or at least bypasses the actual fault - but WHY and what is the actual fix rather than disabling DDE opening for excel?  And what is the side effect of this?

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-09-30T09:05:50+00:00

    I can confirm that disabling the "suggestions, ideas, etc." menu option resolved the slow opening of excel files for me.  Definitely something strange happening between Windows Explorer, Cortana, and Excel.  Turning that off completely resolved the issue.

    I can definitely say it's somewhere between Windows Explorer and Cortana, because if I open a command prompt and manually run Excel like this:

    "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15\EXCEL.EXE" file.xlsx

    I have no startup delay.

    Anyway, turning off that part of Cortana seemed to fix it.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-05-13T05:47:43+00:00

    I also have the same problem. The fix above did not help. My problem started on Thursday, so I have had to deal with it for 4 days now. really frustrating. All files are on local machine.

    Open Excel by itself, no problem.

    Open a file with Excel already running, no problem.

    Open a file with Excel not running takes about 15 seconds.

    This only happens with Excel, Word and PP work perfect.

    I'm using a Sony Vaio with a SSD, so speed is not the problem.

    Any new updates on this?

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-03-01T01:52:51+00:00

    Further to the last update from me.

    I rebooted in SAFE mode

    I double clicked on an xls file on my desktop

    Excel and the document opened immediately.

    However in normal mode it doesnt work.

    Any ideas please?

    Thanks

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