“Slow Opening Excel 2003 Files in Excel 2007”

1. On July 8th, 2007 at 7:03 AM Brian Rathge Says:

   This works fine, but say you are opening more than one file at the same time and you have startup macros registered in “PERSONAL.XLS”, then you will get an error message saying that PERSONAL.XLS is already open.

2. On July 31st, 2007 at 9:59 AM Husmukh Says:

   It does work as advised. However now when you try to open Excel 2007 files with extension .xlsx it takes long as it used to for the 2003 files.

3. On August 6th, 2007 at 4:36 AM Roman Says:

   To Husmukh

   Make the same /e->”%1″ change for *.xlsm, *.xlsx

4. On August 9th, 2007 at 6:12 AM David Says:

   Thanks for the advice. It works.

5. On August 13th, 2007 at 7:44 AM Enzo Paterno Says:

   Greetings;

   I tried this method to fix the 1 minute startup time for Excel (after I upgraded to Office 2007) - It seemed to work for a while and then the problem is back.

   What I did is:
   I have removed the file PDFMaker.xla from:

   C:\ProgramFiles\MicrosoftOffice\Office12\XLSTART

   and this fixes the problem.
   My logic to why I did this is that Power Point and Word do not have any add-ins and the startup time is fine.
   Excel had the PDFMaker add-in ….. So get rid of it.

6. On August 17th, 2007 at 1:06 AM Hayley Says:

   Can someone tell me where to find file types in VISTA!!!!

   AHAHAHAHHHHHHHH

7. On August 18th, 2007 at 12:15 PM m3Rlin Says:

   Hayley: This article may be of help - http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article02-500

8. On August 23rd, 2007 at 10:42 AM brenna Says:

   I have applied this for .xls, .xlsm and .xlsx. It works great! Except…
   Now, after opening the spreadsheet, when I close it I get an error message saying the file can not be found. Any ideas?

9. On August 28th, 2007 at 10:01 AM brenna Says:

   Anybody?

10. On August 29th, 2007 at 11:53 AM m3Rlin Says:

    Does the message popup after you close the file or does it maybe show up in the background and you don’t notice it until Excel is close. I’ve seen that message many times, but it usually pops up when opening the program, not closing.

11. On August 30th, 2007 at 7:00 AM patc Says:

    I have the same issue that brenna posted. The message comes AFTER you close the Excel. (if you close the sheet, no error - only happens when Excel is exited.)

12. On August 30th, 2007 at 8:46 AM brenna Says:

    Hi! I looked around for it a couple of times, and can’t find it anywhere until after I close Excel.

13. On September 6th, 2007 at 2:35 PM Brian Says:

    Same problem, “windows cannot find \\server\share\filename.xls”

    otherwise, the fix works fine…

14. On September 8th, 2007 at 7:48 AM Brian Says:

    Leave the trailing “/e” as is, and append “%1″, so it reads

    “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE” /e “%1″

    This fixed the closing error for me.

15. On September 9th, 2007 at 11:19 AM m3Rlin Says:

    Thanks Brian,

    I updated the post with the proper parameters.

16. On September 10th, 2007 at 10:52 AM brenna Says:

    How funny, this does not work for me! I am applying these changes for .xls, .xlsm, and .xlsx. I even played around with the spacing around the /e. No luck. Well, I guess the error is still much better than the original problem.
    Thanks!

17. On September 14th, 2007 at 1:51 PM Wilson Says:

    How in the world do you this in Vista? I’ve checked and there doesn’t seem to be a way to actually get to the point to add the /e %1.

18. On September 15th, 2007 at 10:31 AM m3Rlin Says:

    Wilson - check this article out: http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article02-500

19. On September 19th, 2007 at 8:04 AM SuperDave Says:

    VISTA NOTE:
    After d/l the creative elemnts app, it best to leave the DDE box checked when editing the command for opening excel files. Add “%1″ to the box beneath the c:|… command line.
    Lower box should read
    /e “%1″ and the DDE stays checked.

20. On September 19th, 2007 at 1:07 PM Sandy Says:

    I’ve made these changes and it fixed the slowness issue but now when a spreadsheet is opened I get a message saying that the file is already opened and reopening will cause any changes to be discarded. Anyone else having this problem?

21. On September 20th, 2007 at 2:29 PM brenna Says:

    Yup. But no idea how to fix it.

22. On September 24th, 2007 at 4:09 PM Michael Says:

    I’m getting the same problem, but it’s only when I’m launching excel for the first time. If I leave excel open and open a document I don’t get the “document already open message”. I guess it’s the lesser of evils.

23. On September 27th, 2007 at 7:58 AM Chris Says:

    The fix works for me, and I get the error after closing Excel but… ONLY if I close without any changes being made to the file AND within the 30 seconds that it used to take to open in the first place. If I leave the file open for longer or get prompted to save changes there’s no error.

24. On October 6th, 2007 at 12:12 PM Tim Pickl Says:

    Thank you for posting this fix — it worked for me!

    Have a great day,

    tim@pickl.com

25. On January 30th, 2008 at 3:11 PM Ryan Says:

    I see that some people are haveing problems when closing saying the file isn’t found, When I OPEN a file is says its not found, and i click “ok” and the file opens anyhow. Did I miss somthing or edit the wrong opening action? Thanks for any help anyone may provide

26. On January 30th, 2008 at 3:27 PM Ryan Says:

    OK! I fixed the “connot find problem” I don’t know how but i did. The prob;em I have now is that when the file opens, it tries to open itself again, then promption the “if you reopen the file you lose unsaved blahblah”. Please help! Thanks

27. On February 14th, 2008 at 8:01 AM Mark Says:

    The article says that you CAN uncheck the Use DDE option. If you do not uncheck, then it opens the document twice. By unchecking the Use DDE option it clears the DDE Message field and the document only opens once.

28. On February 18th, 2008 at 1:48 PM Karen Says:

    I’m having the same problem with my Excel 2007. Here’s what I noticed - When I double click on the file Excel opens but the file doesn’t. The program has “Ready” at the bottom of the window and I would wait several minutes without any files opening. Now what I do is double-click on the file icon and when Excel opens I immediately minimize the window and it pops back up automatically with the file opened. Not sure why this works, but it does.

29. On February 25th, 2008 at 6:03 PM DJ Says:

    Thank you Mr. Wizard. You’re my hero! Fixed the lag when opening Excel.

30. On March 3rd, 2008 at 3:37 PM marrio Says:

    These are the registry changes if you want to write it into a simple
    batch/reg file - one for .xls and one for .xlsx:

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\command]
    @=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\EXCEL.EXE\” /e
    \”%1\”"

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\command]
    @=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\EXCEL.EXE\” /e \”1%
    \”"

    Handy if you have a big network that you want to deploy it across lots of PCs through a login script.

31. On March 3rd, 2008 at 3:51 PM marrio Says:

    CORRECTED:

    These are the registry changes if you want to write it into a simple
    batch/reg file - one for .xls and one for .xlsx:

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\command]
    @=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\EXCEL.EXE\” /e
    \”%1\””

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\command]
    @=”\”C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\EXCEL.EXE\” /e \”%1
    \””

    Handy if you have a big network that you want to deploy it across lots of PCs through a login script.

32. On March 7th, 2008 at 8:37 AM OK Says:

    Great walkthrough, ty for the fix to an annoying issue.

33. On March 12th, 2008 at 10:13 AM Adam Jameson Says:

    Hi Thanks for the help. You solved the problem. One problem I have is that when the windows updates come out for office the problem comes back again. I send the fix and then works. Do you know why the problem keeps coming back? I don’t even have adobe installed on the computer anymore.

34. On March 20th, 2008 at 10:32 AM Scott Sullivan Says:

    I had a single user experiencing issues opening Excel spreadsheets as described above. Logging into the machine as another using showed that the problem was within her profile.

    Turned out an add-in for an old version of Sage was the cause of her problem. Disbling the add-in resolved everything.

    So may be worth a look at add-ins before taking the dive and trying the above fix.

35. On March 22nd, 2008 at 3:58 PM betty Says:

    i’m glad i found this help group, but can’t find a solution to my particular problem.

    running XP (i hate vista), and installed both Excel 2003 and 2007 (some of my clients use 2007 so i’m stuck with it).

    i usually open files in Win Explorer by clicking on them. thanks to this help group, XLSX opens with 2007 and XLS opens with 2003.

    but Excel2003 opens each file in a separate window/instance. i want it to open the various XLS within a single instance, so i can readily tile (view multiple XLS at one time) and easily copy data back/forth. have fruitlessly looked for a start-up switch to force excel to open XLS within same instance/window.

    any ideas, folks?

    thanks!

36. On March 28th, 2008 at 2:43 PM Rich Says:

    Hello,

    I recently had a very similar problem, and the solution suggested immediately worked perfectly. But the problem that was odd is, i did this for .csv files also, and what i ended up doing was putting Open& in the Action area, which stopped it from trying to open the file twice!

    Thanks again for the advice.

37. On April 14th, 2008 at 9:55 AM Steve Cook Says:

    No luck for me adding the %1 in the file type. I still get multiple occurances of Excel 2007 opening.

38. On April 19th, 2008 at 11:59 AM Frustrated Says:

    I have to share my vista-created word and excel files with Mac OS users. Unless I convert to pdf before sending, my doc looks different than it did on my screen and print preview. how do i make sure what i’m looking at is what i’m sending to the mac users?

39. On April 19th, 2008 at 1:00 PM m3Rlin Says:

    Frustrated - what fonts are you using and where specifically are you having problems? Are the problems related to the layout, fonts or images / charts? Just for the record, whether you are using Vista, XP or 2000 does not make a difference. Microsoft Office products the same results on these systems. Each OS “family” will present differently, though. For example: if you view a page on Windows, Mac OS and Linux, you will have three different looks.

40. On May 1st, 2008 at 11:46 AM Matt Says:

    Have the same issue with word. Opening 2003 word files are extremely slow with word 2007. Tried the same little trick as with Excel but still slowwwww. Any Ideas?

41. On May 5th, 2008 at 6:07 AM Gros Fils Says:

    If you are getting strange errors after applying this fix you may be entering the wrong type of quotation marks. If you copy the text string from this article you will get web-formated quotation marks. You can tell because they are at an angle, rather than straight up and down. Try typing the quotes manually to avoid this problem. This fixed my “cannot find file” errors.

42. On May 26th, 2008 at 10:57 PM Russell Says:

    I added the “%1″ and the opening speed has improved - thanks!. Now I get the same problem as Betty - Excel2003 opens each file in a separate window/instance which I don’t want. How do I get it to open only 1 instance of Excel?

43. On October 16th, 2008 at 2:23 PM Buz Says:

    Our IT department found and implemented this fix some time ago. However, every time Excel is updated (running Office Repair to fix an Outlook problem, installing a security update, etc.) the original values get plugged into these registry entries, and I have to go fix it all over again! Maybe somebody should send this fix to MS so they can stop re-breaking it with every update. Aaaargh.

44. On November 5th, 2008 at 9:25 AM Jenn Says:

    So I don’t really think this is the right place for this question, but I am desperate! I have a somewhat related problem to the one noted - I have a workbook that was created in Excel 2003. Part of my company has upgraded to 2007 (from everything I have heard/read, I am holding off as long as possible!) Those folks are having a terrible time using the file. Simple tasks like clicking on a autofilter to filter the 1900 ish rows, or hiding or deleting columns locks up the file or takes minutes to complete. Does anyone have a clue what could be going on here?

45. On November 5th, 2008 at 11:03 PM m3Rlin Says:

    Jenn - does it matter what format you have the file in? What I’m trying to find out is if the file in Excel 2003 format behaves any differently than when it is converted to Excel 2007.

46. On November 13th, 2008 at 12:22 PM Fisher_X Says:

    We found that the %1 workaround created the “second opening” issue, too.

    However, we found our core issue on slow opening was due to an XLS version file within the XLSTART directory. Once that XLS (hidden macro file like PERSONAL.XLS) was saved in the new XLSB version instead, the slow opening issue was resolved.