Office apps (word, excel, onenote etc) are VERY slow to launch after 14.4 upgrade.

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Level 1

96 points

Office apps (word, excel, onenote etc) are VERY slow to launch after 14.4 upgrade.

When I went from 13.8 to 14.4, the only difference I could see was that all MS office apps now take relatively a very long time to load. I open each app several times a day. Before it was near instant. Now it takes > 5s. I have the latest and most expensive macbook pro money can buy, with the fastest SSD on the market, and its as slow as my ancient thinkpad with a SATA SSD.

The SSD is a 512GB with 100GB free. Its about 1 year old.

I also notice that recent files is gone from the office doc icons, unless the apps are running. This means you have to first launch say word, then wait, then right click on the doc icon for word before you can see recents. I am sure it was not like this before.

I havent noticed any speed difference in any other operation (including startup)

I also notice that since the update I have problems with VPNs and networking, which I never had prior to the update. I see frequent spinning wheels of death for 5s at a time, and have to disable and enable VPNs several times to get them to work now (HMA pro and tunnelblick) I use both VPNs for work.

It could just be me. I don't remember installing anything since the problems started (other than the OS update).

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.14

Posted on May 21, 2019 4:51 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

VikingOSX

Community+ 2024

Level 10

116,615 points

May 21, 2019 7:17 AM in response to sfromgi

I have a third-party SSD here that its documentation stated that it uses two different performance algorithms on the drive controller depending if the drive is under half-full, or more than half-full. The latter is indicated to be slower. This SSD also cautions about using external TRIM as it already is built into the controller. Perhaps this is what is going on with your SSD, provided you are not running any anti-virus, so-called "cleaner apps", or something like malware/adware that is stealing your CPU cycles.

Install the free Malwarebytes for Mac, and see if it detects anything. You get full features for the 14-day trial, and then an optional subscription to restore the "real-time" checks. Many of us use and recommend this product without any compensation from the vendor.

Also, if you are running too many applications for your RAM installation, then the Mac will use secondary storage, and that is slower. In Activity Monitor : Memory panel is your memory pressure all green when you are launching/running the Office365 application(s)?

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Answer 2

sfromgi Author

Level 1

96 points

May 21, 2019 7:26 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks for the reply. I have 16GB ram, and half is free, so I dont think this is the issue.

In terms of SSD capacity, before the upgrade, when it was instant, I had 80GB free. I cleaned out some space to give 100GB free for the update (of 512). So when there was less free space it was much faster.

It only seems to affect office apps, and affects all of them. I suspect Apple changed the way they are launched or cached or similar.

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Answer 3

May 21, 2019 8:03 AM in response to sfromgi

It could also be a case of Microsoft trailing macOS releases with adequate fixes, and the next point update or two (.26, .27) may improve performance. Since the issue is with just slow Microsoft applications, that would be my estimate. Have you since updated to macOS 10.14.5 and Office 2016 for Mac 16.25, and has that changed the application performance since 10.14.4?

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Answer 4

Kurt Lang

Level 9

62,094 points

May 21, 2019 8:09 AM in response to sfromgi

We have latest version of Office 365 on both a 2010 Mac Pro, and a 2018 Mac Mini. The latter running Mojave 10.14.5. On both Macs, all Office apps open in under 3 seconds. Less than 2 on the faster Mini.

That may partly be that I removed over 90% of the fonts MS jams into the 2016 and newer versions of Office. They open MUCH faster when each app isn't bogged down with over 300 internal typefaces to load, besides what's already active in the OS, every time you start one up.

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