Fig

Using Office 2000 and am unable to open any documents from one particular folder. When I try, the egg-timer sits in the middle of the screen and nowt else happens, until eventually I get the Microsoft Word not responding message and have to close it down.


so far, I have tried:

1. Defrag on the HD
2. Detect & Repair on Office 2K
3. Moving all of the files to a new folder
4. Moving all of the files to a new folder different machines (tried one with 2K and one with OfficeXP)

none of which have helped.

I can see the contents of the docs using the Viewer in Powerdesk, and can copy/paste from there to a new document, but as all of the docs are forms using drop-down boxes etc., only part of the content is copied.

Please somebody help!!!!

Alec

Might be a printer problems mate.

Try installing a new printer, even one that doesnt exist. Then make it the default printer.

Might help.

Cheers

Alec

Petrol-Head

delete all your files in the TEMP dirctory !
Probably 30 megs worth !

P80SJW

Are there any silly permissions set on the directory or files ?

Cheers

Si.

Fig

Permissions are all OK - its on a WIN98 machine.

TEMP directory has minimal files (< 2meg)

Update:

I've FTP'd the files to home, and I can open them with a struggle (instead of the files opening "instantly" there is a 10-15 second think before they open. Tried resaving but same problem on reopen.

Thanks for the help so far. If any one has any other ideas or fixes, would be appreciated

damian666

Have you installed the Office Service packs? We had similar problems before with *slow* document opens and the service pack install cured it.

However, it caused a whole 'nother problem (including stopping working with lotus 123!!)

Hope this helps
Damian

Fig

Thanks Damian, pretty sure we're still at SP1, as the "Not Broke, Don't Fix It" system is in play at work

Time to wander over and grab a meg or few of Service Packs maybe.

Fig

SP3 installed, problem still exists.

Also seems another user on an XP machine is experiencing the same/similar problems. Not sure if this is a network related problem, but the documents both users are trying to open are on their own local hard drives - opening templates (from a network drive) is not a problem.

Incidentally, if the machines are booted into safe mode the files open OK.

Trying to check whether it could be something to do with Sophos Antivirus Software, have tried disabling it but results are inconclusive.

Foot_Tapper

Hi could it be this ?? Found it on a search

"I have about 1000 word documents, that were created from a normal.dot, that was on a shared drive on a server. This server doesn't exist anymore, but the documents still points to that server, because there is a path to the normal.dot hidden in the file. This causing the files to be extremely slow to open.
I have verified by opening one of the files, and saving it as an rtf file. This makes the path visible in notepad, and it doesn't help saving it as a doc file again. Only a "select all", copy, open a new document, paste, close the old document, and save the new document as the old name corrects the file and make it fast to open. To open a 24kb word document can take up to 5 minutes."

Fig

Some of this is true:

Affected documents were created from templates that were on shared drive where server no longer exists - templates are on a different machine. also the documents were created from several different templates, not just normal.dot

Will see if I can get one open and save as RTF as suggested, main stumbling block here is the majority of them were from templates that were forms, so were completed by selecting from drop-downs etc. If I select all, cut/paste, anything in this type of field is not copied, but maybe this will give me some pointers to look at.

Going off at a slight tangent, if it is true the docs store the path to the template in the file header somewhere, what happens if I email the file to someone else outside the company? I have never had anyone complain theyhave had problems opening the file, but they will not have access to my templates server

Fig

Hey, got a result thanks to Foot_Tapper for pointing me in the right direction.

The problem was due to the templates being on a different server. Rather than take the route suggested above (open/copy/paste/save) I have changed the name of the new server to be the same as the previous one (as that one no longer exists on the network) and voila, it works and all documents open in a reasonable time.

Thanks to all for your help

Foot_Tapper

Bloody hell, that was a shot in the dark !!!
Good news anyway, now who can help me with my networked word
docs opening slowly hmmmmmmm.