Excel files open very slowly

I've had the same problems with Excel 2013 files opening very slow and running windows 10. I shut off Cortana, shut down computer and started it up. Bingo, all Excel files open without a delay. Hope this helps you.

"My Excel files, office 2013 would open very slow and I'm running windows 10. I shut off Cortana and shut down computer. Started computer and the problem left. Strange why Cortana would cause the problem, but no big deal for me, as I really never used it. Hope this helps."

I had the same problem with Excel 2013 opening very slow and I'm running windows 10. I shut off Cortana, reboot, started up and the problem is gone. Don't know why Cortana causes this problem, but all is good now and I never used Cortana. Hope this help you.

Has this problem now been solved?

I just accidentally double-clicked a file (instead of opening the Excel App and then opening the file) and the file opened immediately!!! I have not disabled Cortana. Anybody else want to give it a try and report back?

Tomel said:

Has this problem now been solved?

I just accidentally double-clicked a file (instead of opening the Excel App and then opening the file) and the file opened immediately!!! I have not disabled Cortana. Anybody else want to give it a try and report back?

I think there must be another reason that you had this experience. Is it consistently repeatable?

I use Office 365 (small business account) and had experienced this problem with the Office 2013 desktop apps. I just installed the Office 2016 desktop apps through the same subscription. I tried turning Cortana back on after the upgrade, and it seemed the problem was gone -- for a very brief time: right after upgrading, I double clicked an excel file and Excel opened immediately, loading the file. However I rebooted, tried again, and the problem was back. I turned off Cortana and the problem disappeared again. Rebooted, with Cortana still turned off, and Excel behaves properly. Clearly, Cortana still interferes with proper invocation of Excel by double-clicking a file outside of Excel (back to the DDE issue, most likely).

Strange. I tried it again this morning and it's back to the slow file open again. I tried several times yesterday and files were loading quickly like they used to do before Windows 10. I made absolutely no system setting changes or software installs or uninstalls since yesterday. I'm a pretty experienced Windows user going way back, but cannot figure out what changed overnight (other than the time change).

Any ideas? Has anyone seen anything that would indicate Microsoft has this item on their radar for a fix?

I've been working with excel and a few other apps since my post a few hours ago. Decided to try double-clicking an excel file to see if it was still loading slowly. Guess what -- the excel files are loading quickly again -- and when I say quickly, I mean instantly. As you can see from my system specs, I'm running a fast processor with lots of RAM.

Just did a system restart. Files are loading slow again. I tried loading every application I've been using this morning one at a time followed by double-clicking an excel file. Can't get it to load quickly again. By the way, I didn't mention in my earliest post this morning that I completely shut down my desktop system at the end of each day.

Frustrating situation. Your recent experience makes me wonder if Microsoft has been dabbling with a fix, but hasn't gotten it working under all conditions -- but with no further information to go on, that's incredibly speculative, and even as I type this I realize it's not worth giving them credit for even having acknowledged the situation. This situation is disturbing: MS flaunts Cortana as their slick answer to Siri and Google Now, but the impact on heavy Excel users is pretty dreadful -- and there are probably many millions whose daily jobs involve working primarily with spreadsheets (financial analysts, modelers, accountants, sales personnel, sourcing / materials managers, etc.). If you open and work on many dozens of spreadsheets a day and are used to instant response, having at 15 or 20 second delay inserted up front become unacceptable. Sadly, MS's only response in forums like this has been purely generic, scripted answers that have no bearing on the true problem, and totally ignore the discussions in which so many of us have participated. When we confront the MS personnel who provide such meaningless answers - and ask to have this issue escalated to somebody who can actually understand the underlying issues and show us sufficient respect to actually discuss these with us in a meaningful manner, the MS folks simply drop out of the discussion without responding. The lack of respect and unprofessional manner in which customers are treated is a disgrace.

I haven't seen this issue since going up on Office 2016, and I open Excel files everyday.