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An Office program is slow or may appear to stop responding (hang) when you open a file from a network location

Article ID: 833041 - View products that this article applies to.

SYMPTOMS

When you try to open a file from a network location in one of the Microsoft Office programs listed in the "Applies To" section of this article, the Office program may run very slowly or may appear to stop responding (hang).

For more information about a similar situation, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

2570623

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2570623/ )

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

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CAUSE

This behavior may occur if the connection to the network location is lost during the time that your Office program is opening the file.

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WORKAROUND

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

322756

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/ )

How to back up and restore the registry in Windows

To have us work around this behavior for you, go to the "Fix it for me" section. If you prefer 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. In the File Download dialog box, click Run and then follow the steps in the Fix it Wizard.

Fix this problem
Microsoft Fix it 50637

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.

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

Let me fix it myself

To work around this behavior, add the EnableShellDataCaching value to the Microsoft Windows registry.

To do this, follow these steps:

Close your Office programs.
Click Start, and then click Run.
In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
Locate, and then click to select the following registry key:
Office 2003
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Open Find
Office 2007
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Open Find
After you select the key that is specified in step 4, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click DWORD Value.
Type EnableShellDataCaching, and then press ENTER.
Right-click EnableShellDataCaching, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.

Note Any non-zero number in the Value data box will turn on caching. A zero number or blank (default) will turn off caching.
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.

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MORE INFORMATION

This situation may occur after you click Open in the Open dialog box (on the File menu, click Open) to open a file from a network location (for example, a network server). During the process of opening the file, you lose your network connection or the network location that contains the file that you are trying to open goes down. During the process of opening the file, your Office program tries to add the file name and the path information of the file that you are trying to open to the Windows recent file list. Because the network location (path) does not now exist, the Office program may run slowly and may appear to stop responding (hang).

Note This situation may also occur if your connection to your network is slow because your Office program has to make multiple queries to the network to obtain the correct file information.

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