In that case, try starting Word in safe mode (i.e. hold down the Ctrl key while starting Word) and seeing if that makes any difference. If so, it suggests a Word Add-in is interfering with the process.



Alternatively, it's possible the document has acquired some of corruption. Corrupt documents can often be 'repaired' by inserting a new, empty, paragraph at the very end, copying everything except that new paragraph to a new document based on the same template (headers & footers may need to be copied separately), closing the old document and saving the new one over it.

If neither of those improve things, I'm out of ideas...

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Hello Paul,

First, thank you very much for your effort trying to solve this problem. I posted this problem on three other forums and this is the only one where I get a response.

I started Word in save mode but that didn’t help.

We have a macro in our Normal.dotm. I removed it. Then I saved the xlsm file as an xlsx file so no macro’s there either. Then I disabled every Word and Excel Add Inn by hand. No luck.

Then I started a new Word document en a new Excel document and made some link fields. But although there are about 6 links instead of 97 you clearly can notice the difference in speed when opening on a local or network drive. On a network drive opening the Excel file in advance gives the same speed as when the files are on a local drive.

Because the files will be used as “template’s” and will be copied to different customers directory’s (Excel en Word in the same directory) I removed the path prefix so at first opening the linked fields are pointing always to the BBA sjabloon.xlsx in the same directory.

Example {LINK Excel.Sheet.12 "BBA sjabloon.xlsx" "Data voor PVE!R3K2" \a \t \u}

After first opening all the linked fields are automatically modified with the correct path.

Example {LINK Excel.Sheet.12 "\\\\UDENV002.dlv.intern\\tijdelijk\\BBA sjabloon.xlsx" "Data voor PVE!R3K2" \a \t \u}

So I thought that this could be the problem at first opening. But when I save the Word document with the modified path and open the Word document for a second time the problem still exist.

Even when I click No when asked to update the linked fields it takes about 5 minutes to open the Word document. The linked fields are automatically modified with the correct path, but the value is not updated.

So I’m also out of options.

Johan.