Slow "Save As" in Microsoft Office Applicaitons

It seems we've been having a problem a lot lately with slow saves when choosing "Save As" in Microsoft Word and Excel.

This post is mainly a place to keep track of some of the ideas I've come across. There is a Microsoft KB article for example

If the slowness comes when choosing a different drive it is likely the matter of a having a disconnected network drive that needs to be removed.

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88 Comments

Slow Save As

We use redirected apps data folders. This folder contained invalid links which cause the symptoms enumerated... Was found using procmon, by Mark Russinovitch

Please check :
%userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Recent and delete everything inside for a supplemental fix.

Francis

Compatibility Mode!!

I FOUND A SOLUTION WHICH WAS RIGHT UNDER MY NOSE AND NOT MENTIONED ANYWHERE IN THIS POST!

I tried everything in this post, but nothing worked. Every time I hit 'save' or 'save as' Excel would hang for AT LEAST 15 seconds.

I had been saving my excel files to 2003 version (.xls) as to ensure that our clients can open and view the files if they have not upgraded yet. AND THIS WAS WHAT WAS CAUSING THE SLOW DOWN!

As soon as I started saving to the native 2007 format (.xlsx), saving was almost instantaneous!

I have a very strong suspicion that this is yet another covert effort by Crooksoft to encourage people to save to the new format and force their colleagues to do the same. Yes, you can argue that they have a compatibility pack available for free for 2003 users, but how many end users actually know about that? All they see is that they cannot open the file, they call the sender and complain and they hear something like "oh, what version of office do you have? 2003? Well you need to upgrade to 2007 because thats what we have" uggghhhh!

Well, I'm not going to force OUR clients to upgrade. I'm gonne work on all files in xlsx format and only when I'm done with all the changes will I save as the old version and send it to the client!!!

Screw you Crooksoft!

the real fix

From the command prompt. Type FDISK C:

That worked for me!!

Vista = Epic FAIL

One would think that after you have selected c:\ and then are trying to get to a sub-dir, it would not continue to test other network drive connections.

M$ = Epic FAIL. 20 years of operating systems development, and this is the best these clowns can come up with.. sheesh! I heard from an ex-Microsoftie, that out of 75,000 employees globally, only around 500 produce s/w... the rest are all operations/marketing.. don't know how many do support ? But those guys would just catch the issues not re-code patches to fix this mess...

Windoze 7 better "knock it out of the park" or everyone will buy apple macs or run Linux.

30-minutes to Save-As; 15 seconds to save.

I've tried the mapped drives trick, and no luck. Here's my problem: In Excel 2007, when I do Save-As, the save-as dialog box pops up after a bit and I specify the file name. It then takes over thirty minutes to save. Admittedly the file is large (31MB), but it only takes about 15 seconds to execute an ordinary Save command to the same drive. The drive is on a network. My network and CPU are very fast. Saving to a local hard drive is also very slow. Any ideas?

Thanks a lot! It was driving

Thanks a lot!
It was driving me nuts! I also noticed this happend after I did folder indexing while doing some search.

Slow Save As Fixed Thank God

...."disconnect network drive" ...deleted the "broken" connection to the shared drive and this resolved the problem....."

wooohooo!!! Thank you, thank you! This was like pulling a thorn out of my side. Worked like a charm. Yep, I had two old drives that were still connected.

Wow, such a simple fix. :-)

Here's another version...

I used procmon as suggested by CIDM and noticed one of the things it was trying to access during Save As was a shortcut in my My Documents root that pointed to an FTP site. By moving that shortcut out of My Documents it sped things up from 40+ seconds to just 2-3.

Environment:

Windows 2008 R2
Office 2010 beta

windows hang

jab mai apana computer start karata hu to windows xp run hota hai usake bad windows startinup na aakar ke windows xp sow karke wahi pe ruk jata hai. how do fix it

Re.Slow file save as

Thanks a lot for this....
I was having this issue...was fine browsing my computer/explorer and dragging files but browsing within Office etc...was a ridiculously slow affair.

Had 2 connected Network drives which had been connected for testing in the past and were not needed ....disconnected and BAM....quicker "In-MS Office" browsing....

Thanks again

Ignore that fool that

Ignore that fool that suggested 'FDISK C:'. Some people out there might take it seriously and not find out unti lit is too late that this wipes your hard disk!

Good Call

This worked for me. Thaks for sharing!

Worked for me.

Worked for me also. THX.!

Had the performance problem whenever browsing within MSoffice applications. Should expect that Microsoft would haved solved this since it seems very common to have disconnected mapped network-drives on a laptop and seeing the date this thread origins from.

Firstly, "save as" was slow only in outlook...

My problem was only in outlook but it spread everywhere when I upgrade MSOffice from 2k to 2003. After disconnecting the old drives everything was fixed. Great tip indeed!

The suggestion by

The suggestion by CIDM:
"Please check :
%userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Recent and delete everything inside for a supplemental fix."
is what worked for me, when nothing else did.
THANKS!

Slow "save as" - delete network places

I had the slow "save as" issue most of the time, not just with Microsoft Office. The response time was especially slow immediately after disconnecting my VPN connection to the office. I deleted the list of network places that were present. Some of the network places were obsolete. Some were present only when the VPN was connected. Now "save as" and general file operations are much, much quicker.

I already had 'Automatically search for network folders and printers' deselected. (Perhaps it had been selected at some time in the past.)

I did not have any mapped drives.

No audio or video discs in the drives.

Reconnecting the VPN used to make the "save as" faster -- but now the response can be described as snappy all of the time, VPN connected or not.

I don’t know why. Everybody

I don’t know why. Everybody is talking registry cleaning now. It seems your computer can be faster if you clean registry, so I try the tuneup360. It is not free, but it will give a free license if I agree to do a customer survey. I do feel my computer runs faster after that.

Slow Save As

Thumbs up and PC is really starting to suck now that mac is the new game.

Slow Microsoft Office Save As

Ok. I've been doing IT for 25 years+. The disconnected drives makes sense. I didn't have any. I've been having this problem forever it seems. I've read alot of postings on the topic and then I came across the cleanout of
"%userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Recent".
This is a STUPID WINDOWS TIMESAVER, that in the long run costs time. I open files everywhere, and some of those places no longer exist. You would think MS would get their act together, and age this stuff out.

In any event, I deleted the junk in Recent, and now no delay. Thanks CIDM....

Mine works fine most of the

Mine works fine most of the time. I am running on Microsoft Office Excel 2007. But I remember, there was this error message that popped up at times when I am having difficulties in saving my excel file or word doc. I just forgot what exact error it was. Well, I will get back to you and post it here. Someone might be able to help me resolve it.

This worked for me

This worked for me also.

Thanks

Thanks alot :)

Thanks alot :)

You're my hero!

I was going crazy because my save as was so slow! As soon as I looked at my drives I noticed that an old e-mail drive was still trying to connect. Once I disconnected, it was instant gratification! Thank you thank you thank you!

MS Office Excel 2003 shared worksheet on the network, slow savin

Disconnecting the network or removing the mapped drives is solution to many. Thanks for the great tips. I have MS Office spreadsheet on Windows 2003 server and the users are accessing the network. There are two networks connected by VPN, MetroE 2mg. Opening the file from the second network poses a challange retrieving and saving the file-- too slow. My users must have mapped drives to access these files. I appreciate tips anyone can offer.
Thanks again.

Thank you!

Really helpful!

Slow save as

After reading most of the post could not resolve the issue.

Later found I had a link in My documents pointing toward a server that didn't exists.

Look for those files with .lnk extension.

Thank you for this site!

Thank you for this site! After disconnecting the network drives, I still could not get the Save Function to work. However I read the email above regarding the Music CD. Thought this was strange that the Save Function would be impacted due to a CD. However when I checked my CD Drive...there was a photo CD in the player.

AMAZING....I took it out and magically my Save Function for word started working!! Also it was very fast as compared to what it was performing like before.

Not sure why this happened....However thanks for this great site!!
alen from best wireless router.

Thanks for the advice - it

Thanks for the advice - it gave me the clue I needed to solve the problem. A 'favourite' linked folder to a shared drive that was rarely online. Once the link was deleted no problems.

Slow save file from internet etc - Windows 7

Thank you very much. This happened to me when I left an office with my laptop where I had been working with network connection but did not disconnect. Now I have disconnected and speed is back to normal

Slow Save As

I have been having the problem described above (Slow Save As when I am online). It started when I installed a new router. But when I try the solution suggested above, I get the response that I have no network drive to disconnect. (I confess don't know what a "network drive" is.)

An additional piece of info that may be relevant: When I open "My Computer" The "Network" section shows the router listed there. The previous router didn't show up (and didn't give me a Save As problem).

Any suggestions?

Check out this MS KB Article

This explains the issue and possible workarounds http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313937

MS really lazy

for us, maybe this solution is doesn't matter,
but not with our bos or other people who only use their computer, and not knowing how to find their drive again? lets saya people who only know to use only,not an IT i think,

cause program is made to make us simple,
why not ms, make a fix to fix this problem,

this threat its really help full,for temporally use, but how many people can remember this?

thats why, ms is reallly lazy, no matter what their excuse is,
this is their original product, if they cannot fix it? who can?

Office running slow

we had to edit the history section with regedit

http://www.techieshelp.com/microsoft-office-is-slow-opening-files/

It ended up being some stupid

It ended up being some stupid link to a network drive on my desktop. Not even a network drive!
thanks
alex

Great Solution for Save As

Thanks so much for this solution. I had my new wireless printer turned off so the network couldn't find it. I did not know this would affect Microsoft Word and Excel. Turned the printer on and it all works normally. Thanks again.

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