Delay starting Office apps from Windows Explorer

With Office 2003, the apps (Word, Excel, etc.) open very quickly and then using File Open will open documents also quickly. But when I double click on a document icon, there is a notieable (10 sec.) delay before the Office app opens. This doesn't happen with anything else, just Office. Anybody got any ideas?

John Pendergrast

 

Can be your antivirus program if it has an office plugin. Nortons for example has an option in the Antivirus Options section under miscellaneous called Office Plug-In. With this on when you open files in office, it scans them before opening them, hence the lag.

Disabling this generally makes docs open faster. I believe the risk of turning this off if very low indeed, considering the Automatic Protection (shield) should pick it up if you open and infected doc anyway, and in most cases even before you open it, because it would catch it on its way in. Very rarely docs you create that are clean become infected without leaving your PC. Used to be a bigger problem back in the age of macro viruses, not such an issue now. This is the age of Trojans.