Word documents open slowly with Golden Gate 27.2.1

Ensure that Word is updated to the current version (MS365 is on Word 16.115). Having said that, in both 16.114.5 and 16.115 on my 16" M4 Pro MBP running macOS 27.2.1, Word documents open essentially instantly if the app is already open, and in about a second if the app needs to launch before opening the document. That includes small files and much larger ones (10-50 MB Word docs open just fine).

Runaway processes and low free storage space are common reasons for apps to run slow. 

It is possible there are processes running in the background that are using significant resources. Check Activity Monitor, CPU tab (sort by % CPU) and Memory tab (sort by Memory) to see what's running hard. Make sure that View menu > All Processes is selected, so you are seeing everything.

Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

Confirm that you have sufficient free space on your internal storage. The absolute minimum is ~30-40 GB free space, and as a rule of thumb you should aim to have 15-20% of your total internal storage as free space. You can check the amount of free space you have on your Mac in a variety of ways:

• Select your internal drive then click File menu > Get Info, check Available space
• Go to System Settings > General > Storage, check the graphical display at the top of the settings pane
• In Disk Utility (in Applications > Utilities), by selecting the main container disk below the drive itself (you may need to select View menu > Show all devices to see it)
• In the System Report – hold the Option key and click the Apple menu > System Information (the top menu item), look for the name of your internal drive (Macintosh HD, unless you have renamed it as I did)

Note that on versions of macOS prior to Golden Gate, the ‘available’ space reported with the first two methods above was greater than the ‘free’ space reported by the second two methods. Apple corrected that confusion with Golden Gate, and as shown in the above screenshot, the available/free space is consistent across the different methods. For more details, see this User Tip.

Some steps to take to safely free up space:

Free up storage space on Mac - Apple Support

Optimize storage space on your Mac - Apple Support

How to free up ‘System Data’ and other st… - Apple Community

If nothing in the above reveals an obvious culprit, then appropriate troubleshooting steps are Safe Mode and creating a new user account to test. 

See if the problem is present when you boot in safe mode. That process performs some system cleanup and clears caches, and also disables 3rd party extensions that may cause problems.

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

If that does not correct the issue, test in a new user account. A newly-created user account will have all settings at default, and if the issue does not occur in that new account then it provides guidance on what may need to be changed to correct the issue.

Add a user or group on Mac - Apple Support

Once the testing is complete, the new account can easily be deleted.

Delete a user or group on Mac – Apple Support

If you have 3rd party ‘protection’ software installed, that may be the problem. That includes:

• Cleaners (software claiming to automatically free up space)
• Optimizers (software claiming to make your Mac run faster)
• Antivirus software
• VPN software (unless provided by a school/employer to enable access to internal resources from a remote location)

Such 3rd party system ‘helpers’, ‘cleaners’ and ‘protectors’ do more harm than good. In fact, such products are completely unnecessary for macOS and the only ‘good’ (if you want to call it that) they do is to put money in the developers’ pockets. Cleaners and protectors cause compatibility issues, often after macOS updates. Commercial VPNs claim to hide your browsing activity from websites, and while that may be true those VPN providers just sell your browsing data to others and the software itself slows down your internet connection and may cause syncing issues with cloud-based services. Antivirus software is simply not needed on Macs, period. For the user, all of these types of software offer only harm…and if that is limited to harm to your bank account, then count yourself lucky. If you have installed such software, follow the developer’s instructions to completely uninstall it (note that some developers fail to provide instructions and their software installs can be pervasive, meaning the only way to truly remove it is to erase your Mac, reinstall macOS then restore your user files from a backup). 

It might help to download and run EtreCheck, written by a long-time forum member. The free version is fine. Post the full report using the Additional Text button. No personal information is revealed. 

You might also try your question on the Microsoft Forums:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/tags/831/m365-office  

Mister_Lawyer wrote:

yeah sure I'll totally do all that and not blame this new OS which clearly is the problem. Also why do I have to click on files like five times before they open? Also why does my OS keep jumping me from program to program or freezing up entirely or not letting me enter a password when it is demanding a password? Oh it's because it takes 17 minutes to open a single file in Preview, Adobe, Microsoft, and anywhere else I might want to open a file. That's right.

Usually because of add-on apps installed, or nascent hardware problems, while generic macOS problems tend to flood the forums. You might be the first here too, but Office itself isn’t the bastion of stability. Microsoft bricked perpetually-licensed Office a week or three back, and for a couple of their updates.

When troubleshooting, I’d rather verify and not assume.

For this case, please download and run EtreCheck (the free version, don’t need the paid version here), and use the Share to share the results to the Mac clipboard. Then open a new reply here, and press the Additional Text button (the button that looks like a printed page), and paste and post the hardware and software configuration report here. From that, we can get a little more detail about what is installed and what is running here.

Mister_Lawyer wrote: yeah sure I'll totally do all that and not blame this new OS which clearly is the problem. Also why do I have to click on files like five times before they open? Also why does my OS keep jumping me from program to program or freezing up entirely or not letting me enter a password when it is demanding a password? Oh it's because it takes 17 minutes to open a single file in Preview, Adobe, Microsoft, and anywhere else I might want to open a file. That's right.

The most likely explanation for a huge delay when opening a file is some kind of 3rd party interference. Specifically, this would be a Finder extension/provider or a cloud service. If you've done anything "clever" with cloud folders, that could easily cause this problem. One possible example would be a folder that is visible to multiple cloud services.

That being said, recent versions of macOS 27 do tend to exhibit the problems you describe. Just the other day I found that macOS 27.2 changed the behaviour of a 40 year-old operation - renaming files in the Finder. With my trackpad, I can't tap once to select a file and then tap again to rename. That second tap must be a full click (pressing down with haptic feedback), but only in certain Finder views, of course.

So those other strange problems that you report could be something similar. You aren't the first person to report this problem. See Double-clicking documents in Finder somet… - Apple Community

And just because other people can't reproduce the problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In one of the last macOS 26 builds, Apple News would crash within 10 seconds of launch - every time. Of course, no one else could reproduce that. But there certainly wasn't any 3rd party system modification interfering with Apple News. My best guess is that I had something funky, but hidden, with the configuration profile architecture (which I don't use and is completely unrelated to News, but Apple does funky things with it).

It's best to deal with these problems one at a time. Try to identify a specific sequence of events that triggers them. The file opening issue is probably different. Compare how different apps behave with documents in the same location, or the same app with documents in different locations. Different folders can exhibit wildly different results. They make look the same to you, but they're not.

I tested by opening an 89KB Word doc cloud-stored in DropBox. Our home internet is a modest 300MB/sec cable service. Office 365 and macOS are fully updated on my 2024 M4 Pro MacBook Pro with the base 24GB RAM and 1TB storage. The Word app was NOT open a the time the test.

The file opened ready to edit in just over three seconds. That suggests to me that this is not a universal problem.

On older Intel Macs with mech hard drives, slow-opening of Office files seemed de rigueur. What Mac is yours?

Have you installed any aftermarket utilities like antivirus, "cleaning" apps, or client-side VPNs. Other than a slow mech hard drive, those are my prime suspects.

Best first check for updates from Microsoft, then remove all add-on VPNs and all add-on security apps and all add-on firewalls and such and test again, then check with Microsoft support or with the Microsoft discussion forums.

Sure, you can blame macOS and hope that Apple fixes it. In your experience, does hope work well as a plan? I have not found that to be the case. Since images, Photoshop 27 files, Word docs, large PowerPoint files and everything else opens fine on my Mac running 27.2.1, I do not need to troubleshoot anything. You can choose not to do so and just live with the issues, or you can try to figure out what is wrong with your Mac.

So if Golden Gate 27.2.1 is obviously the problem why are the rest of us not having any issues with opening an Office document, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook? Certainly you’re not claiming everybody who installed 27.2.1 is seeing the same thing are you?