The slow opening is caused by Word trying to access your template on a networked system (which includes systems connected to the internet). The solution is for you to change the attached template to 'Normal' before sending the document. You can do that via Document Template>Attach on Word's Developer tab. Doing this to all documents based on your template is undesirable, as it means they no longer have access to any of the code, etc. upon which they're based.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]