Excel 2003 Office File Validation (OFV) opens workbooks slower across the network

After you install MS11-021 and the Office File Validation (OFV) Add-in for Office 2003 (KB 2501584 (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-US;2501584) ), workbooks stored in a network location open slower over the network in Excel 2003 than they did without the OFV installed. The decrease in performance depends on the size of the workbook and bandwidth of the network and in some scenarios can seem to hang Excel.

The OFV reads the file to determine whether the file is trustworthy before it opens the file. When this is done over the network it reduces performance because of the network traffic when reading in the parts of the workbook.

Download and install the Office 2010 File Validation update from this Microsoft knowledge base article:


After you install the update, if you find the performance of files over the network is still not satisfactory, the "Workarounds" section of this article identifies the various options available to you.

Workarounds

Method 1:
To be able to have both the protection of the OFV, and typical performance over the network when opening files, upgrade to either Microsoft Excel 2007 or Microsoft Excel 2010.

Method 2:
Copy the file to the local workstation. Open and save it in Excel from the local hard drive. Copy the file back to the network location.

Note: If multiple users are accessing the same file, you must be cautious to collaborate with the other users before you copy the file back to the share so that you do not overwrite the changes that were made by another user. The Shared Workbook feature cannot be used with this workaround.

Method 3:
To use Excel 2003 and avoid the network performance issue, you can disable the Microsoft Office File Validation Add-in for Excel by removing the Excel portion of the OFV. This removes the additional protection of the OFV for Excel while still protecting the other Office applications.

To have us apply the steps from this method to fix this problem for you, go to the "Fix it for me" section.

Fix it for me

To fix this problem automatically, click the Fix it button or link. Then click Run in the File Download dialog box, and follow the steps in the Fix it wizard.



Notes

• This wizard may be in English only. However, the automatic fix also works for other language versions of Windows.
• If you are not on the computer that has the problem, save the Fix it solution to a flash drive or a CD and then run it on the computer that has the problem.
• If you have a computer that has Office 2010 and Office 2003 installed, use Method 4. When you attempt to remove the protection from Office 2003 for Excel 2003 on a computer that also has Office 2010 installed, Excel 2010 will reinstall the OFV protection.
• If you have a computer that has Office 2003 and Office 2007 installed, running the Fix it will disable the protection for both versions.

Method 4:
To use Excel 2003 and avoid the network performance issue, you can disable the Microsoft Office File Validation Add-In for Excel by using a registry setting. This removes the additional protection of the OFV for Excel while still protecting the other Office applications.

More information about this setting is available here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg985445%28office.12%29.aspx (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg985445%28office.12%29.aspx)

To have us apply the steps from this method to fix this problem for you, go to the "Fix it for me" section. If you prefer to follow the steps to fix this problem yourself, go to the "Let me fix it myself" section.

Fix it for me

To fix this problem automatically, click the Fix it button or link. Then click Run in the File Download dialog box, and follow the steps in the Fix it wizard.




Notes

• This wizard may be in English only. However, the automatic fix also works for other language versions of Windows.
• If you are not on the computer that has the problem, save the Fix it solution to a flash drive or a CD and then run it on the computer that has the problem.
• If you have a machine with multiple versions of Office installed (Office 2003, Office 2007, and Office 2010), running the Fix it will disable the OFV protection for all versions of Excel.
• If you need to deploy the Fix it solution to multiple computers, you can use the following command line:
  
  %windir%\system32\msiexec.exe /i \\server\share\MicrosoftFixit50741.msi /qn
  
  For more information on the command-line options for msiexec.exe, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
  
  314881  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314881/[anySimpleType]/ ) The Command-Line Options for the Microsoft Windows Installer Tool Msiexec.exe

Then, go to the "Did this fix the problem?" section.

Let me fix it myself

You can use the EnableOnLoad registry entry to configure how you want Excel to handle opening workbooks for the OFV. By default, the EnableOnLoad entry is not present in the Windows registry. To add the EnableOnLoad entry to the Windows registry, follow these steps:

1. Exit Excel.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate and then click to select the following registry key:
   
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\
4. After you select the key that is specified in step 3, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.
5. Type Excel, and then press ENTER.
6. Select Excel, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.
7. Type Security, and then press ENTER.
8. Select Security, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.
9. Type FileValidation, and then press ENTER.
10. Select FileValidation, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click DWORD Value.
11. Type EnableOnLoad, and then press ENTER.
    Note: The default value is 0 which disables the validation.
12. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.

Did this fix the problem?

• Check whether the problem is fixed. If the problem is fixed, you are finished with this section. If the problem is not fixed, you can contact support (http://support.microsoft.com/contactus) .
• We would appreciate your feedback. To provide feedback or to report any issues with this solution, please leave a comment on the "Fix it for me (http://blogs.technet.com/fixit4me/) " blog or send us an email (mailto:fixit4me@microsoft.com?Subject=KB) message.

Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office 2010 are not affected because they include a new feature for opening files over the network that copies the complete file locally first and then scans the file by using the OFV so that the file reads do not include the network traffic.

To help protect your computer from risk, we recommend that you do not open files that you receive as email message attachments, especially if the messages arrive unexpectedly. Additionally, do not open files that you receive as attachments if the files are from a person who is unknown to you.