Performance issue when opening DOCX Word Doc with Excel Links

[galmcrantz]

Question: Has Microsoft missed the boat or is there a config setting that can prevent Word from needlessly opening Excel repeatedly (upon initial open of a DOCX Word doc) when pre-existing links should NOT be updated. The behavior is good using 2003 formats (DOC & XLS), but varies significantly (~100:1 range in performance) depending on the test scenario (see below) using DOCX with XLSX.


We can't move our environment to the new XML formats until we can find a fix. We were led to believe Microsoft knew this to be a bug in Office 2007, but it has NOT been corrected in Office 2010. Omitting a detailed explanation for why we need to do this, here's our test scenarios:

• Currently testing Office 2010 Pro Trial version on WIN XP SP3. (We have found similar results using Office 2007 with Win7 or XP).
• Word Option Deselected/DISABLED: "Update Automatic Links at Open"
• The Word Doc contains 100 linked Excel tables and is 130K in size (DOCX).
• Each link points to the same 10x10 cell range in one Excel Workbook located in same directory as the Word Doc, although other tests using separate directories produced similar results.
• The Excel Links were inserted into Word via Paste Special/Paste Link/MS Excel Worksheet Object.
• The workbook (XLSX) is 15K in size.
• All Links are set for "Manual" update, our testing showed no difference if links are set to "Auto".
• Again, Word is set to NOT update Automatic links when the document is opened.
• Results shown below are for local hard drive test.
• Network response times are slightly greater on 100mb LAN
• Word is completely restarted prior to each test to make sure there's no application caching involved.

LOCAL DRIVE RESPONSE TIMES TO OPEN THE WORD DOC in DOCX format:
1. Open the Word Doc from Word with Excel closed
175 seconds (Excel appears to be opened and closed once per link)

2. Open the Word Doc from Word with Excel open & workbook closed
33 seconds (Excel appears to be accessed once per link)

3. Open the Word Doc from Word with the linked workbook already open
7 seconds (Excel appears to be accessed once per link)

4. Rename Excel XLSX workbook so that Word can't find it.
Then open Doc the from Word.
1-2 seconds (Excel does not appear to be invoked)

5. Repeat ALL of the above scenarios 1-4 using DOC and XLS files
These files are created with "Save AS" option based on original
test files and then re-pasting the links.
1-2 seconds (Excel does not appear to be invoked)

Summary

Using DOCX/XLSX, if Word can't find the linked spreadsheet it gives up and performs nicely. Otherwise, Word performs needless, time-consuming access to Excel, and in the worst case, opens and closes Excel repeatedly in the background.

Testing with DOC/XLS formats gives good performance across all scenarios.

 

[helmbrecbe15]

Ran into the same issue today. I had the same facts and circumstances, auto update was not enabled and I selected no when going into the word document.

Found a workaround by leaving the excel file as xlsx then saving the docx back to doc. The links stayed in tact and the needless "cycling" in and out of excel went away.