Office for Mac 2011 very slow

One of the things I previously did was a Microsoft-recommended process with a "do not skip any steps" caveat like this. I did ALL the steps and it did not fix the problem. The link you sent seems to have several additional steps that I do not remember. So, maybe this will work. I will try it. Perhaps what I tried before was an older Microsoft process.

Thanks.

I discovered I had bookmarked the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article #2398768, the same one you referenced above. Since I bookmarked it I am pretty sure I used the process.

Among my numerous efforts to fix my Office problems I definitely ran "Remove Office 2011 Uninstaller.pkg" which I downloaded and still have. It was supposed to remove all elements of the Office install but had the usual caveat that there was no guarantee. It is remotely possible I discovered the Knowledge Base Article later and just bookmarked it for future reference.

I believe the whole process took almost two hours on my last effort. This was largely due to the reinstall recommendation of rebooting after installing every Office update.

I don't know, I guess I will try the Knowledge Base article process on the small chance that I did not do it already. I need to do something because based on how I use Office the current slow load/no load problem is a real issue for me.

I just removed Office per your procedure and reinstalled. Knock wood, my quick test seems to indicate this may finally be fixed.

At this point, I don't think I used this removal process before. I must have spotted it later and just bookmarked it. I know I did use the .pkg approach. As you say, it doesn't work. As I worked thru your process just now I realized that some of the things I did before were not done in the same way, e.g., trashing the entire MS Fonts folder. Also, I did not empty the Trash before which is one of the things your process requires.

So, thanks for your help. I will give it a little more time before I click "This solved my question" to credit your response.

BTW, do you know if the MSUserData Folder that the process has you move to the desktop can be put back now? I see there is a new one in place from my reinstall but it would be MS default stuff. I don't think I had any custom settings or templates anyway, however.

Thanks again.

After a day's use it looks like I am good to go with Office once again operating normally. I clicked "This solved my problem" to credit you.

Regarding your Outlook comments, I agree. I didn't like it when I had to use it at work. But I don't use it at all at home. I would just as soon it was not even loaded on my Mac but MS recommends that you not try to exclude it as part of the Office suite installation. I have been having enough problems with Office on the Mac and am not inclined to go against their recommendations. So, it just sits there taking up disk space.

Well, the problem appears to be back. There was a large Office update a couple of weeks ago. I believe it was 14.3.2. I wonder if that could have set things back and if running thru the above procedure again would fix things?

Yes, as far as anything initiated by me.

P.S. I am the only adminstrator of the computer.

I don't know what was open when this occured yesteday. I had to restart the computer to be able to do anything. Usually I have Chrome and Safari running side-by-side on my 27" screen and I usually have Word and/or Excel open.

One thought your question brings is that I may have had Dropbox open at least part of the time when the problem occured. However, lately I have been keeping it closed unless I am using it. And, I have changed its setting so it does not automatically start when the computer boots. It has been id'd as causing freezing problems with some apps such as Finder. That is another problem I have had but seem to have fixed by rebuilding the LaunchServices register with Onyx.

I will have to double-check the Activity Monitor the next time this happens. Your idea about testing under a new admin. user is also good.

Guess I will wait before redoing the procedure to purge and reinstall Office until verifying the above.

Thanks much.