FIND button/option in Word 97 takes 10 seconds to open

I've noticed now that when I click on the FIND button/option in Word 97 that it takes a good 10 seconds for the dialog window to finally open up so that I can perform a search thru the document. Why would this be? Don't remember this being a problem before?

 

Hi Mike
Any chance that your computer is just running a little low on resources? Is it doing this consistently now?

Daizy

 

I doubt it. I have 384MB of ram. And it happens even if Word is the only thing running. Has to be something in the FIND utility of word itself (must be loading something or TRYING to that either doesn't exist or it's verifying or creating some kind of buffer). Just know it never used to take so long. I checked o the MS site, but couldn't find anything specific to the Find util <sigh>.

 

Mike,
Just to let you know that you aren't the only one.

It "seemed" to just start one day, but I have no idea what the cause is. It's one of those features in Word that I don't use often, so the cause could have been anything. I've just been "putting up with it ".

And, you are the first person that I have seen ask about it.

 

Just taking a stab it it here, but I found the following in MS KB Article 160068 which might help:

The more fonts installed in Windows, the slower Windows and many applications start because these programs read the entire font list at startup. Word does not process the font list at startup; however, the impact of a large number of fonts may be felt at other times such as the first time you print. In addition, certain dialog boxes (such as the Font dialog box or the Insert Symbol dialog box) take longer to appear the first time in a session with a large number of fonts installed in a system. Furthermore, when Word needs to perform some complex actions, fonts use additional memory and file resources.

 

Actually, I was wondering about the fonts issue. I've read that somewhere too, although I didn't see anything specific to the FIND utility in Word. THAT might actually be the problem. I do have alot of fonts installed (didn't actually install them myself, but many programs that I have installed and uninstalled over the years put them there without my asking them to).

Since I do like having an assortment of fonts, I guess I'll just live with the slowdown too.

Btw, how do you uninstall fonts anyway (do you just delete them from the \WINDOWS\FONTS directory, or is there a utility that does this)?

 

Actually I was right about how to delete fonts. Found this in the help:

To delete a font from your computer:

Click Start, point to Settings, click Control Panel, and then double-click Fonts to open the Fonts folder.
Click the icon for the font you want to delete.
On the File menu, click Delete.

 

I tried deleting all but 3 fonts (required by windows), rebooting, then trying out the 'find' in Word, but it still takes 10 seconds to open the dialog box. So it isn't the fonts <sigh>.

Had a little scare because when I rebooted all the text in every window was WAY too small to read and when I reinstalled (copied back) the fonts it still remained that way. Luckily when I rebooted again, all went back to normal <phew!>.

So the mystery continues...