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I have a user that only created a Word 2k3 doc 2 days ago. The file lived on a mapped drive from the server (Offline Files disabled on the DC). She's since added what seems like a number of tables to the doc and about 7 pages of data. In total the file is less than 150k. Yesterday she reported that on a number of PCs (she moves around the site a lot), after a few seconds of editing (actual typing text) that the response (keyboard to screen) got dramatically slower - even to the point of maybe 10-15 seconds lag. At this point the doc is virtually un-usable.

The network link on the affected workstations seems fine and uncongested. And copying the file to the local PC, editing locally, then overwriting to the network path seems to solve the issue. But i can't justify the problem when i have much larger docs on much slower connections with multiple shared users that work perfectly fine. Thinking that the access time on the server might have been a problem, i moved the file to another share that the same user has access to, but on a much faster disk on the server system, and it doesn't seem to have helped.

I know this is very vague and 'shoot in the dark' style but I'm hoping I've given enough detail for someone to spot something and go "that's it!" and tell me what i need to fix. Any thoughts welcome.

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I would suspect a macro or a macro virus.

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  • @Dennis - If a macro or virus, wouldn't it likely perform as poorly when the file is local?
    – Chris
    Nov 9, 2009 at 13:14
  • I think this might be the case. When i open the file in Word2k7 it says "macros have been disabled". How do i find this macro? -ive tried the macro list, the VBA code editor, and the document inspector - i can't find it! grr!
    – cottsak
    Nov 10, 2009 at 5:59
  • It was a macro - the only way i know this for sure is coz Word2k7 was flagging it when opened and blocking the macro. We used Kara's suggestion to copy the content to a new file as remedy. thanks to all
    – cottsak
    Nov 18, 2009 at 8:59
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You mention that this happens "on a number of PCs" but not all? Were you able to find any difference in installed software or configuration on the problem PCs? Different service pack level for Word or Windows, that kind of thing?

If everything matches, my next step would be to remove a chunk of the file, save as a different version, and see if you can still produce the issue. I'd probably remove a page at a time to see if it's an issue with a particular part of the document.

One silly trick that's worked for me is to ctrl-A (select everything in the document), copy, and paste into a shiny new Word doc. This is slightly different than creating a file level copy, and has resolved some bizarre issues for me in the past.

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  • This is a classic remedy to buggered up word docs.
    – Nasa
    Nov 12, 2009 at 15:01
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@Kara's silly trick sometimes work for me. If the document works well locally and not on shared then the problem is network related. make sure the PCs have the correct DNS. Also I noticed a few times Office works extremely slow if there are networked printers installed on the PCs which are no longer in service. I believe Office does some kind of printer validation behind the scenes.

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  • That's a horrible conclusion that it is network related if it is slow when opened on a share. Possibly that there are server/desktop configuration issues, but so unlikely that it is the network causing issues when other network resources work fine and do not cause slowness.
    – sclarson
    Nov 9, 2009 at 15:13
  • Office does do validation of the configured printer, but does it on local Word docs as much as it does on networked Word docs... so I would say that is not the issue. Nov 9, 2009 at 23:01

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