Excel and Word slow to launch

Hi there!

CleanMyMac found no malware.

Mac computers do not need any sort of antivirus or cleaning software. Anti-virus and similar types of software can cause performance issues, security issues, and make macOS appear buggy. Your Mac is worse with these types of Apps installed.

In addition, Mac computers cannot get any traditional "viruses". The only area of concern is some malware, mostly adware, and it's easily avoidable. Do not install apps from unknown sources, and you'll be safe!

Here are some links that describe Apple's built-in malware protection, which are far superior:

• • macOS - Security - Apple
  • Protecting against malware in macOS - Apple Support
  • Protect your Mac from malware - Apple Support
  • Ways to avoid malware and harmful apps on Mac - Apple Support

Delete CleanMyMac: How to uninstall CleanMyMac X.

Jack

It’s OK to not run EtreCheck.

Please upload a screenshot of your Mac’s storage information. In the Finder, choose Go > Utilities, then double-click the Disk Utility icon. (Disk Utility is located in the /Applications/Utilities folder.) Alternatively, click Launchpad in the Dock, type Disk Utility in the search field, then click the Disk Utility icon. Once Disk Utility is open, take a screenshot of the information it automatically opens to, which will be your startup disk. Next, select View > Show All Devices in Disk Utility and select the top-level, non-indented, disk entry. In most cases, this name will be one of the following:

• APPLE HDD…
• APPLE SSD…
• Fusion Drive

Then, take a screenshot of the newly selected entry. Upload all screenshots here. 

Next, it is recommended you Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac in order to identify any potential issues. Let us know the results of this test. 

Jack

Thanks for the screenshots!

It's possible your Fusion Drive is failing. To confirm, you can use SMART Utility, which will check the health of your storage devices. Upload a screenshot of the app with the results.

Jack

I have seen many Etrecheck reports where the presence of CleanMyMac or other so-called "cleaning' apps have significantly slowed drive/SSD performance. The macOS, cat-like, cleans itself and has for over 20 years. You paid Apple to build in elegant, automated self-maintenance routines that run in the wee hours of the morning without any help from you or MacPaw. They take care of all the housecleaning chores, including defragging if needed. Those other apps get in the way of this sophistication.

I'm not comfortable using EtreCheck, sorry.

Without the most value tool in existence for getting accurate diagnostics in a forum setting where we can neither see nor touch your computer, you can try a very low-tech quiz that asks three questions:

• Is the computer slow to boot?
• Are big apps slow to launch? (we know that is a yes)
• Once launched, do those apps run at acceptable speed?

Three "yes" answers point to an under-spec drive or, in Fusion hybrid drives, a failing drive component. The launch times you report suggest something is failing, but that is a guess based on history instead of hard data we lack.

You can try other drive performance tools for reporting write and reads speed that we need to see to effectively figure what is up. At this point we are shackled to quoting generalities when we don't have data.

I suspect you're low on Free Disk Space, but...

We need to see what all is running, a report from this will not display any personal info...

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Pastebin is a good place to paste the whole report if you capture the URL while there…

Workable but harder for me to work with...the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck. In a Reply before you click post, look for this to add longer texts...

Without the kind of detailed information that etrecheck can provide, the only conclusion we can draw is that the slow loading is probably due to the slow mechanical portion of the Fusion Drive. You can't control what gets cached on the SSD portion of the Fusion Drive.