PowerPoint gets the SLOWS

Problem

PowerPoint starts and/or shuts down very slowly, takes a long time to open files, bogs down when you're entering text, etc.

Possible solutions
Here are some things to try:

• Shut down PowerPoint and all of your other programs then restart your computer. See below for further information.
• If you run Outlook, turn the journaling feature off
• A PowerPoint user on the newsgroup reported that installing the most recent service pack for the version of Office in use and setting up Outlook personal folder files so they are no longer using compressible encryption speeded PowerPoint up considerably.
• Check your \TEMP folder for excess files. Another user reported that he found hundreds of WMF files in his \TEMP folder and after deleting them, PowerPoint started up in seconds rather than in minutes.
• Do you have lots of add-ins loaded? Each add-in will slow PowerPoint startups down, some more than others. As a rule, add-ins won't cause PowerPoint to run slowly once it's started, though.
• Check Tools, Options, the Save tab; remove the checkmark next to "Save AutoRecover info every xx minutes.
• If you're on a network and have opened files from the network, check this Microsoft Knowledgebase article: An Office program is slow or may appear to stop responding (hang) when you open a file from a network location

If text entry is very slow

• Choose Tools, Options
• Click the "Spelling and Style" tab
• Remove the checkmark next to "Check spelling as you type"
• Click OK, quit and restart PowerPoint

Microsoft's John Langhans offers this diagnostic advice:
Viruses, adware, spyware and other nasties can also cause problems.

To troubleshoot this do the following:

A) Determine whether something in the system startup is causing the problem:

1. Close all running applications
2. Start -> Run
3. Type in "msconfig" without quotation marks
4. Click "OK"
5. Click on "Selective Startup" in the "General" tab of the System Configuration Utility
6. Uncheck the "Load Startup Items" option
7. Click "OK"
8. Click "Restart" when prompted to restart system
9. After system as restarted, launch Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 and see whether the symptom has gone away.

If symptom has gone away, selectively add items from the startup list until the problem reoccurs (at which time you will have identified the software which is causing the problem).

B) Selectively loading back items from startup list

1. Close all running applications
2. Start -> Run
3. Type in "msconfig" without quotation marks
4. Click "OK"
5. Click on "Startup" tab of the System Configuration Utility
6. Click on checkbox to add first item not already selected in the list.
7. Click "OK"
8. Click "Restart" when prompted to restart system
9. After system as restarted, launch PowerPoint and see whether the symptom reoccurs.
10. If symptom does not reoccur, go back to step 1 and repeat.

Once you detemine what software is causing the problem, we would certainly appreciate if if you post your results in the Powerpoint Newsgroup.

Learn more about the PowerPoint Newsgroup here

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