M365 too slow to open files when mapped network drives are unavailable

Dear John,

Good day, and thank you for the detailed description of your issue, and for sharing your workaround, this is genuinely appreciated and will likely help others running into the same behavior. I'm truly sorry to hear that this has been an ongoing pain point for over two years. As a forum moderator, I completely understand how frustrating it must be for the Office file open process to freeze for minutes just because a disconnected mapped drive is still visible under net use. Unfortunately, my role here is limited to providing general guidance and pointing you to the correct channels for feedback and further investigation, I do not have direct visibility into the Office file-open timeout logic or the ability to change it from my side.

Since this appears to be a product-level behavior rather than something that can be configured on your end, the most effective way to influence a change is to share your detailed observations directly with the Microsoft Office product team through the official feedback portal. That is where the product team actively reviews customer input and prioritizes fixes based on the volume of similar reports. You can submit your feedback here: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback

As a moderator, I will also pass along your feedback to the appropriate team for further consideration. While moderators do not directly influence product design, user feedback is actively reviewed and helps prioritize future development. If you would like, I would also be happy to submit the feedback on your behalf.

If you would also like to have this actively investigated on your specific environment (for example, to check whether there is a registry key or Group Policy that can shorten the timeout in the meantime), I would recommend that the Global Admin in your organization open a service request with Microsoft Support. A technical support engineer can review the Office logs, verify the network configuration, and check whether any relevant timeout settings can be adjusted from your side, or escalate the case to a specialized team for deeper analysis. For detailed instructions on how to get support, please refer to Get support - Microsoft 365 admin. If you don't know who your IT administrator is, please refer to this article: How do I find my Microsoft 365 admin? - Microsoft Support 

For additional assistance, use this link to find the appropriate contact number from your region: Global Customer Service phone numbers - Microsoft Support 

I truly hope this issue gets prioritized and improved in a future Office update. Thank you again for sharing your detailed workaround, it will genuinely help other users searching for the same behavior. Please let me know if you need anything else. Wishing you all the best.

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