How To Speed up Microsoft Office 2008 For Mac
Thousands of people have been experiencing extremely long load/startup times for Word, Excel and PowerPoint in office 2008 for Mac. I have read horror stories of people waiting up to 4 minutes for the splash screen to disappear on brand new Apple Computers. My load time problem wasn’t that bad, but it did take over a minute to launch. I knew there had to be a reason as to why the new programs were drawing 99.4% of my 2.2Ghz macbook pro with 4Gb of RAM (not even Office 2004 running in rosetta used this much CPU!). I have managed to get the load time down to about 4 seconds or less with some very minor tweaking of the preferences. Here is how to get Office 2008 running like it should.
- Launch word (and wait for it to eventually launch)
- In the menu bar, go to: “Word” > “Preferences…”
- In the preference pane, click “General”
- Uncheck the box called “WYSIWYG Font and Style Menus”
- Uncheck “Show Project Gallery At Start Up”
- Click “Ok”
- Quit Word
- Re-Launch Word.
On the re-launch of Word it should be pretty quick. It seems that the problem is how Office renders the fonts for preview. I suggest using “Font Book” which is built into Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5 to preview fonts.
Although we have solved the load time issue, I still feel there are better alternatives for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations for the Mac platform. I would highly recommend looking into iWork 08′ by Apple. Keep in mind that iWork is compatible with office documents and can also export documents so they can be easily opened in Microsoft Word.
I hope this helps everyone out, please leave comments and let me know how it worked for you!
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Tags: Mac:Office 2008, Microsoft Office 2008, Office 2008, office 2008 slow, office 2008 slow start up, office 2008 splash screen
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I remember the beta was so horribly slow!!! It would take a long time to load, with tonnes of crashes in Excel.
I’m sticking with iWork 08 for now - I figure it would run best on a Mac. For any export documents for Windows users, I simply choose to export it as a PDF and it’s all good.
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:14 pm
yes, the final version is definitely better, runs a lot smoother.
It would be interesting to see how the beta version works with the preference changes I mentioned though.
February 5th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
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February 12th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
I suggest not using word. Text edit and indesign are a fine pair, and more powerful.
February 13th, 2008 at 8:36 am
yes, that is definitely another way to go. However i still prefer iWork ‘08. Have you tried it?
February 14th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
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February 14th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I’m running Office 2008 on a MacBook Pro with 2.2GHz, 2GB RAM, and OS X 10.4.11…Word takes approximately 5.5-6.0 seconds to load, Excel takes 6.0 seconds, and PowerPoint takes 9.0 seconds to load. (All this is without the suggestions with tweaking as mentioned above)This is with other programs running like MSN, Safari, Adobe CS3 and iCal. I also use the iWork ‘08 Suite, and notice that Pages, and Keynote take much longer to load (about 10-12 sec)
February 15th, 2008 at 3:34 am
i use entourage, it is a nightmare…..
i am seeking for a better software replace entourage but better than the mail application …any recommend? or i will downgrade to office 2004…
i am very disappointed to this version of office…
February 15th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Thanks! This worked for me, but it’s still not as fast as 2004 was.
February 15th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Adam, thanks for letting us know how it runs on your machine. By the looks of it the problem is pretty random and could vary depending on how many fonts you have installed. I also believe the load time will vary depending on how your network is configured, the office 2008 suite checks all the computers on your local network for someone else running the program with the same serial. This has been known to take a while also.
February 15th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Pine, I to have tried Entourage and found it horrible! I still cannot get over the fact that entourage does not work along slide the address book database and the ical calender, instead we are forced to use Microsoft’s bloated address book and calender programs. I personally use Mail.app and i love it, its simple clean, and integrates perfectly with Mac OS X. If you are looking for another email client you could look at Mozilla’s “Thunderbird” it seems to be a pretty decent application. Here’s a link to the site: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/
February 15th, 2008 at 8:49 am
I take it back - now it takes ALMOST as long to load, but you do have to rely on Font Book if you want to see what fonts to use. It would be better to go back to 2004, as suggested, find another app.
February 17th, 2008 at 8:33 am
I cannot use Frutiger font on Powerpoint 2008. It works fine on every application on my Mac. Even on Word 2008; but not i Powerpoint 2008.
Any idea about how to solve it?
All other fonts works fine…
March 24th, 2008 at 6:22 am
The Problem ist the very bad compatibility with the old *.doc format.
I upgraded to the critical recommend first update for office 2008 and now
office is unable to render the *.doc formatted documents.
I saved the file into docx and it works.
Try it out and scroll through a long text in doc format. Some lines will be there two times.
They can be removed by a double-click on them.
April 4th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Hoi, sorry to say but all above doesn’t work for me. I have a G5(1GB, 2Mhz) running 10.5.2. After booting my Mac Excel starts in 58 seconds. The second time it’s 17 seconds. About the same for Word. I tried the things you suggested but it didn’t change anything
Gr Ed
April 25th, 2008 at 7:53 am
The problem I have with Word is the lengthy delay when closing files or switching to Word windows on a busy desktop. It can take up to ten seconds each time, which adds a lot of time to your work day if you are on Word all day! Does anyone have a solutions for this problem?
May 6th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Nope. Didn’t work for me. Surely there is a “hack” somewhere!
May 28th, 2008 at 3:40 am
I convinced my father to convert from his old fashion PC with the argument that “word for mac is even better than your old word 97″ - wooa I was so wrong
Word 2008 is running so bad on his brand new Macbook Air, either it crashes completely or it just hangs up randomly and makes you look at the, to my dad very familiar “carousel” (while just editing plain text). Especially in compability mode?!
Who the hell invented .docx by the way??
But the problems remain after this, even the long start-up time though, cant wait to see more stability updates from ms
May 29th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
This worked for me. I would much prefer to use iWork however most of my correspondences to clients need to be done in Word as that is what they use and the Export in Pages does not retain the formatting as well as a native Word document.
June 12th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
After installing Office 2008 for Mac and starting up Word, I immediately went to look for an answer as to why the start-up was so slow (I installed it on my new MBP 2.4GHz).
So, after reading the instructions on this page and went and tried it out. However, it didn’t really seem to help. I haven’t clocked the time before the changes, but now after the changes (and having previously opened and quit Word) start-up seems to take about 18 seconds.
Maybe it doesn’t seem that long to some but it annoys the hell out of me, as its supposed to be a new fast laptop. The last version of Word for the pc starts-up in less than 5 seconds on my 2 year old pc!
And just to compare; Photoshop CS3 is done loading and ready for action in less than 8 seconds on my MBP!
Something is just not right here. It would be great if someone had a solution that really worked.
Or maybe I should switch to iWork or something…
June 18th, 2008 at 1:24 am
I’ve just had the chance to compare office 2003 powerpoint on PC to office 2008 powerpoint on Mac. (I know, somewhat an apples-to-oranges comparison.)
On a MBPro 2.4ghz machine, powerpoint is hardly usable, really. Short example.
Tried dragging a circle over a picture and did the same on the pc (which -in addition- is lower-spec than my mac, 1.5ghz older c2d vs. 2.4ghz c2d). On the mac it _stutters_. If I were rotating a high-def dinosaur with textures, lighting, shadows and shading on, OK. But come on. On the PC it flies, really like it should.
June 20th, 2008 at 3:22 am
Many thanks, you’ve saved my life (well my sanity)! The slow start up since ‘up-grading’ to Office 2008 has driven me to distraction, especially when I’ve got XP in VMWare fusion running on another screen and the Office apps open instantly!!
This should be a top tip in bold letters on the Mactopia web site!
Thank you
!!! Richard.
June 20th, 2008 at 3:25 am
Ps.. didn’t say, MBPro 2g ram, Leopard, changed from 18 second plus load time to 6 seconds after this tip for Word and Excel. PPT down to about 10 from 20 secs.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:40 am
Thanks guy u saved my life, i was wondering why my dual G5 and his 6giga of ram was taking 5minutes to start word 2008 (and 5sec for word 2004)
Very good job!