Is Office 2013 painfully slow for everyone?

Not for everyone, apparently, else we'd have heard far more complaints about it by now.

I'm running a couple different versions of 2013 in virtual machines, meaning very plain-jane video, lower spec "processors", less memory etc.  I don't expect my head to snap back from the pure thrust when I launch PPT, but I'm not running into anything as slow as what you describe either.

Have you checked for updates to the video card drivers?

Thanks for such a comprehensive answer, but I'm afraid your solution doesn't seem to affect the inherent problem (as I like to think now) in Office 2013. Your answer mostly revolves around disabling animations and I have already disabled them.

Yes most of it is disabling animations, but there is more.

First, did you disable animation both inside of the applications AND in Windows?

How about "background saves" in Word?

Are you editing directly from Skydrive  / Onedrive?

etc?

Thanks for such a comprehensive answer, but I'm afraid your solution doesn't seem to affect the inherent problem (as I like to think now) in Office 2013. Your answer mostly revolves around disabling animations and I have already disabled them.

I have the latest video drivers, Windows updates and Office updates. It runs slowly on both my computers. The other one is a laptop with dual-core CPU, 3 GB memory and nVidia 8800 MGT GPU.

It isn't slow like I-have-to-sit-there-and-perhaps-make-myself-a-sandwitch slow, but it is definitely laggy and simply isn't as smooth as Office 2010 and earlier.

Is your experience the same?

I have seen some other reports of the same issue.

One cause is a new "feature" in 2013 called "animation".  Some programmers with too much time on their hands provided "cute" animation actions to suck up "wasted" CPU cycles.  On my 8 year old laptop it wasn't too bad in Word, but was so bad in Excel 2013 that on that basis alone I rejected 2013 (until I learned about this fix).

From the variety of fixes for roughly similar issues it is apparent that there is more than one cause for the problem.  The trick is finding the one (or more) that is affecting you ...

Slow Word 2013

<snip>

I experienced a similar issue with slow typing speed in Office 365 Word. I edit a substantial number of Word and Excel documents for work and found the SkyDrive storage incredibly beneficial for working remotely.

I realized though that documents which are being edited from Skydrive, not a local copy, experience the slow typing speed issue.

The fix:   From word:  File, Options. Word Options has an advanced tab on the left labeled ‘advanced’. About 3/4 of the way down, a category for ‘Save’ options exists. The default setting has ‘Allow Background Saves’ checked. I uncheck this option and instead check ‘Always create backup copy’ and ‘Copy remotely stored files onto your computer, and update the remote file when saving’.

I assume that if you’re storing the files on Skydrive, or Dropbox, or web, or maybe even some external drive or flash memory this background save could be lagging and result in typing slowness. Either way, I changed the advanced options, and no more problem. Maybe it’ll work for you.

Excel didn’t have the option, and I usually save a local copy anyways due to the working file size.

*I run windows 7 with office 365 and windows surface pro with win 8 and office 365. 4gb memory each.

</snip>

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Slow Excel 2013 - Rubber band effect, delayed Response time when typing – Disable Animation feature

In Office 2013 MS added a funky new UI feature called “Animation”. It is supposed to “smooth out”, or some such nonsense, cursor movement in the applications. I first noticed it in Excel 2013. I found it so annoying that that “feature” alone was enough to completely turn me off from using the whole Office 2013 bundle. Fortunately, or not (?), I found these fixes.

<snip> Hi, I have exactly the same problem, Excel2013.

Just opened a new spread sheet, typed the nr 1 in cell A1 to A22, took me about 10 seconds.

Took excel 55 seconds to display, looks like slow motion.  </snip>

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The article in the first link has a link to another article with a downloadable file that will make the change without you having to edit the registry manually

There’s an easier fix for the “rubber band” animations in Excel - just turn them off

1. File menu,
2. Options command
3. Advanced option
4. Scroll down to the Display section of the dialog,
5. Turn ON the box for “Disable hardware graphics acceleration

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I have my Control Panel set up to display small icons (meaning I don't get the big generalized groupings), and here's the path in that kind of setup (Windows 7):

Press the Windows Button + [Pause/Break] to skip the next 2 steps

    or

        Open the Control Panel

        Choose System

Choose Advanced System Settings in the left hand column of choices on the next dialog

On the [Advanced] tab, click the {Settings...} button in the Performance section

Clear the checkbox next to the "Animate controls and elements inside windows" entry right at the top of the list

Click [OK] and close out all of the dialogs and the Control Panel.

That did it for me instantly without a reboot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4o6p12HL30

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I found an option that can be turned off when you're typing over cells that have already been saved. Under options > advanced - (allow editing directly in cells) once I turned this off the lag stopped. 

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*********** Registry Hacks *********

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**http://winsupersite.com/article/office-2013-beta2/office-2013-tip-disable-animations-143779**- Reg hack

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**http://www.withinwindows.com/2012/07/21/disabling-animations-in-office-2013/** - Reg hack

Note, you may have to also add the “Graphics” key.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Graphics]

”DisableAnimations”=dword:00000001

To see the effect of disabling Office 2013 animation, you’ll need to reboot your computer. 

To reverse the effect, change the value of the added DWORD to its default of 0.

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Alternate, related solution

I’m using Windows 8, and found a different solution there:

To disable Windows animations (this is secondary IMHO, but may be required):

• On the metro start screen type Edit,
• <tab>, <down Arrow> to then move the search results down 1 to “Settings”
• “Edit system environment variables” is the first thing in second column on my search results, yours may vary
• double click on it
• provide the admin password to display the “System Properties” dialog
• In the “Advanced” tab, Performance section, click on the “Settings...” button to display the “Performance Options” dialog
• Personally, I prefer to select the “Adjust for Best Performance” option to get rid of the frilly “bells & whistles” that do not contribute to efficiency of my system.
• At a minimum, confirm that the “Animate controls and elements inside Windows” option is disabled/unchecked.
• Click on Apply
• OK out
• boot the computer

Under options > advanced > turn off  “allow editing directly in cells”

Here is another idea worth looking at :<snip>

I have had this problem also when authoring user guides.

Eventually I found that if I switched off the “Maintain compatibility” check box in the Save As dialog the problem disappeared.

Word may be scanning each element to make sure it maintains compatibility.

See this screen capture: https://www.dropbox.com/s/djupspb2572kd9i/Word%20Slow%20Typing.png

</snip>

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See JL Lanthams reply in this discussion for how to turn off Windows 7 Animation

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-excel/need-to-turn-off-excel-animation/2d2a4a22-0f0a-4e02-aead-31b126765769

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**Excel 2013 is very slow in loading large workbooks**

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-excel/excel-2013-is-very-slow-in-loading-large-workbooks/3dc258b1-0d9b-492c-8ab8-2ba1df26fc7e?msgId=7f92ee0a-4a73-45ce-ac2a-80eb0e0ad1ae

Anita Oakley \[MSFT\] replied

Hello Jacques,

I just saw this, and I can explain it. In 2013 we went to a more secure algorithm across Office - not just in Excel. Excel 2013 uses SHA-512. It makes only milliseconds of difference with one call, but in those cases where code runs, protecting and unprotecting many sheets, it all adds up to a terrible performance issue.

Because it is considered a security risk to modify that, all request for a change have been turned down. The development team will never do anything to make Office less secure. See http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/office-2013-known-issues-HA102919019.aspx for an explanation from the development team.

Thanks, Anita

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Visio 2013 Slow

<snip>

Turn off Hardware Acceleration

Visio 2013 x86 was super slow on a Dell Vostro machine running Windows 7 Professional x64. After a series of troubleshooting, I traced the problem to the accelerated graphics. Just disable the it. Here’s how:

1. File menu,
2. Options command
3. Advanced option
4. Scroll down to the Display section of the dialog,
5. toggle the check the box for “Disable hardware graphics acceleration

This issue is most noticeable on machine with dual video chip set.

</snip>

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Bonus "fix":

**Calming Down the Grandpa in Office 2013** - Fix UC Tab - Upper Case Tab - Capital Tab

http://ricbret.wordpress.com/2013/01/

Graphic instruction for fixing the all upper case tab labels design mistake

The short form instructions are:

Go into Home tabl > Options command > Customize Ribbon option. Select the tab and Rename it.  Add a single space before or after the existing name and change the required upper case letters to lower case. OK out of the dialog.

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