Office 2003 documents take longer than expected to open in Internet Explorer

When you try to open a Microsoft Office 2003 document, workbook, or presentation in Microsoft Internet Explorer by using an HTML hyperlink, the document may take longer than expected to open in the Internet Explorer browser window.

This problem may occur if the Office 2003 document contains many custom document properties. You can add custom document properties programatically or manually by using the Custom tab in the Document Properties dialog box.

This problem was first fixed in a hotfix that is now contained in a service pack. If you installed the latest Microsoft Office 2003 service pack, you do not have to install the hotfix.

Service pack information

This problem is corrected in Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 1.

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Office 2003. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Hotfix information

How to obtain the hotfix

This issue is fixed in the Microsoft Office 2003 Hotfix Package March 18, 2004. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
After you install this hotfix, follow the steps that are listed in the "More Information" section of this article to set the MaxCachedStreamSize registry key and to activate the hotfix.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.
This problem was first corrected in Office 2003 Service Pack 1.

To activate this hotfix, follow these steps:

1. Quit all open programs.
2. Click Start, and then click Run.
3. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
4. Locate, and then click to select the following registry key:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common
5. After you select the key that is specified in step 4, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click DWORD Value.
6. Type MaxCachedStreamSize, and then press ENTER.
7. Right-click MaxCachedStreamSize, and then click Modify.
8. In the Value data box, type 200000, and then click OK.
9. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.

Note The registry key value MaxCachedStreamSize ranges from 10,000 to 200,000 in decimal value. You may have to try different values to find the MaxCachedStreamSize value that reduces the time that it takes to open a Microsoft Office Word 2003 document in Internet Explorer.