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Office 2011 - It's still S-L-O-W?!

mongoos150

mongoos150

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 20, 2005
839
0
Hi Everyone,
After finally buying my new 2.66GHz i7 MBP and a fresh copy of MS Office 2011, I was excited to finally have a copy of Office that performed quickly / speedily / comperable in speed to any new Windows machine I've ever used. Not so much.

Every copy of Office for Mac I've had has been super slow. I'm talking 20 bounces (minimum) to open, pinwheel to do many functions, etc. Every copy of Office I've used on any Mac has had some degree of sluggishness. I can't understand it! My bare bones Windows 7 computer (with much slower specs than my new i7) launches Office instantly, no lag, no problems! Why is Office plagued with speed issues? It's absolutely maddening. As a side note, I have always preferred the Windows version of Office to the Mac-skinned version MS gives us. :mad:

I can't be alone here, can I? How does Office run on a hex-core Mac?
 
Hmm. I've found 2011 to be SIGNIFICANTLY faster than 2008 on both of my systems. Although I can't offer any specific suggestions, it sounds like something is wrong (repair permissions?)
 
That is exactly the reason why I now use my copy of Office 2008 as a cup coaster and I now use iWork 09.

It is also the reason I stopped using MSN and went on to AIM using iChat.

M$ products on a Mac have always been rather shoddy I'm afraid.
 
The MBP is literally 18 hours old. Aperture, Final Cut Pro, Adobe CS4 Suite - they all open fairly quickly. Different story with MS Office.

They must be coding the software poorly or something? That can be the only explanation for why my old & slow Windows 7 machine opens Office 2007 in the blink of an eye. It's the only suite that is slow on my brand new machine.
 
Nermal said:
Hmm. I've found 2011 to be SIGNIFICANTLY faster than 2008 on both of my systems.
Click to expand...
In general, I feel the same way.

However, after a fresh reboot, starting up an Office program on my MBP (with the same config as the OPs, assuming he also upgraded to a 7200RPM drive) does take longer when benchmarked to starting an Office program on my Windows work laptop.

I rarely reboot my Mac, so it's not an issue for me. The second, third, ... times I open an Office program on my Mac (after a reboot), they open instantly.

I will say that on my new Air, the first time I start an Office program after a reboot, it's up and ready go to within literally one or two seconds. So the Mac version of Office must be doing more disk related things when it starts up, and a faster drive (like a SSD) dramatically helps it out. A faster processor doesn't.
 
Yes, I'm rocking the 7200rpm drive. I realize an SSD would be great for MSOffice, but as I like to store many video files on my machine (I'm using 80% of the 500GB drive), it's financially unfeasible to buy a 512GB SSD.

We'll see where SSD prices are in another year or two.
 
It's definitely not faster. Same? But I too was hoping for something better. Other than the Notebook feature in Word, iWork has everything else needed. I was considering something like Circus Ponies [ala-OneNote], but still haven't pulled the trigger yet...
 
Used to be that the Windows version of Office had code that pre-loaded a bunch of the Office DLL code when Windows started, which consumed memory needlessly when you weren't running Office but made the Office apps open impressively quickly when you started them up. Maybe the installer on the Mac doesn't pre-load any code.

Which is fine with me. I'd rather have the machine boot quicker and with less RAM pre-grabbed by any app and wait for the app to load when I ask it to load.

Even Office 2008 loads pretty quick on the new MacBook Airs. I'm starting to get lusty for a nice SSD to speed up my disk I/O.

aristobrat said:
In general, I feel the same way.

However, after a fresh reboot, starting up an Office program on my MBP (with the same config as the OPs, assuming he also upgraded to a 7200RPM drive) does take longer when benchmarked to starting an Office program on my Windows work laptop.

I rarely reboot my Mac, so it's not an issue for me. The second, third, ... times I open an Office program on my Mac (after a reboot), they open instantly.

I will say that on my new Air, the first time I start an Office program after a reboot, it's up and ready go to within literally one or two seconds. So the Mac version of Office must be doing more disk related things when it starts up, and a faster drive (like a SSD) dramatically helps it out. A faster processor doesn't.
Click to expand...
 
Crikey said:
Used to be that the Windows version of Office had code that pre-loaded a bunch of the Office DLL code when Windows started, which consumed memory needlessly when you weren't running Office but made the Office apps open impressively quickly when you started them up. Maybe the installer on the Mac doesn't pre-load any code.

Which is fine with me. I'd rather have the machine boot quicker and with less RAM pre-grabbed by any app and wait for the app to load when I ask it to load.
Click to expand...

The thing is - my machine boots very quickly, and all of my apps load very quickly as well! No compromise on the i7. Everything is quick - including pro apps - except MS Office. There's something wrong here, and it's in Microsoft's court.
 
nefan65 said:
It's definitely not faster. Same? But I too was hoping for something better. Other than the Notebook feature in Word, iWork has everything else needed. I was considering something like Circus Ponies [ala-OneNote], but still haven't pulled the trigger yet...
Click to expand...

I am running it on a MB and my experience is much different. I never benchmarked the two, but 2011 starts up much faster than 2008 and the overall responsiveness of it is head and shoulders above 2008.
 
I can say on a regular load of apps (Chrome (15-20 tabs), itunes, VLC, Filezilla (transferring a 9GB file over ftp), mail.app, speed download, total finder, air video server and more...) running in the background with my i5 MBP, it takes about 11 bounces to launch Word, 5 to launch excel, 1 for powerpoint, then i relaunched word and it took 1 bounce, and im using the 5400 rpm drive.

If any office app was recently launched it the other ones open pretty quick too, 11 bounces seems the norm for first time launch while running multiple applications for me though.
 
mongoos150 said:
Hi Everyone,
After finally buying my new 2.66GHz i7 MBP and a fresh copy of MS Office 2011, ... I'm talking 20 bounces (minimum) to open, pinwheel to do many functions, etc. ...
Click to expand...
After reading this post, I conducted my own bounce test on Word 2011 (14.0.1). The first time I launched it without a file, it bounced eleven (11) times. A few seconds later, I launched it be double-clicking a two-page letter. It bounced three (3) times. My computer is a 2.93 GHz 17" MacBook Pro (Early 2009) running MacOS X 10.6.5.
 
Word 2011 bounce test for me.

First 2 , second boot 1 bounce.

MacPro 2.8 Octo


All Office Apps are significantly faster for me in 2011 iteration.
 
I found 2011 was not significantly faster than 2008. Bizarrely I find both these versions slower than 2004, even though I am on a recent MBP so 2004 is running in Rosetta (which is what I use). I'm sure if compatibility was my main worry I'd be content, but I just want to work efficiently without frustration.

I have seen websites that have done tests of various functions and claiming that 2011 is faster. I found that scrolling around complex spreadsheets in Excel 2011 was about four times slower than Excel 2004. Waiting for the print dialogue takes an age longer than before.

Ultimately I'd be two 'upgrades' worth better off if MS marketing had been honest and gone "we've made it even more sluggish but stuff glows" in 2008 and "we've made it harder to use and it's just as sluggish" this year.
 
Hi folks

I havent had trouble with the loading time. On my iMac and my macbook air 11.6 all office programs load in 1 bounce. The load time for the first time I opened each program was about 3 bounces, after that. 1 bounce for each program.
 
I just installed Office 2011 on both a Mac Pro (1,1), and a early 2008 Macbook Pro.

The startup is spectacularly fast. I love it.
 
Actually, new Word launches faster than Pages (the difference is not extremely noticeable, but still). Love it!

The only thing is that I don't get the behaviour of Maximise button, it's kinda random. :confused:
 
I never bought Office 2008, but when 2011 came out I jumped on it because I heard it was so much better.

I don't experience any of the slow load times that the OP is talking about. All of the 2011 apps(including Outlook) all load after 1 bounce. Overall I find the software to be very responsive, and my machine is not that speedy(13" C2D 2.53, 5200 harddrive)

I really wonder why there is such a difference between our speeds.
 
mongoos150 said:
The thing is - my machine boots very quickly, and all of my apps load very quickly as well! No compromise on the i7. Everything is quick - including pro apps - except MS Office. There's something wrong here, and it's in Microsoft's court.
Click to expand...

Maybe the ball is actually in your court? On my machine, Office loading seems fine. After a system restart, launching Word for the first time is four bounces of the dock icon. Subsequent launches are not even one bounce and it's up and running.
 
Office 2011 has been lightning fast for me.

One thing i would check though is that your documents are in the latest DOCX format, or the equivalent for the other apps. Any old MS Office document that opens in 'Compatibility Mode' is really sluggish in Office 2011 for me, especially if it has pictures in it. Worse than 2008 in some cases, but as long as the document is in the DOCX format, it's nice and speedy.
 
mongoos150 said:
The thing is - my machine boots very quickly, and all of my apps load very quickly as well! No compromise on the i7. Everything is quick - including pro apps - except MS Office. There's something wrong here, and it's in Microsoft's court.
Click to expand...


Reinstall?

Contact Microsoft for support?

Takes 1 bounce on 4 year old intel iMac
 
On both my C2D 2.13 MB Pro w/ a 64gb SSD and my Hack Pro 2.93 i7 with a very middle of the road 500gb 7200rpm HD performance is great. Even on my wife's 2.66ghz i5 27" iMac(last gen 2010) its great.

If its taking that long something else is wrong.
 
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