Slow Microsoft Office

When trying to open an Office product (Word, Excel, Access, etc.) on my XP computer (with 512 MB RAM and no other programs running) each of these programs is slow to load and does not respond to mouse clicks once open - except very VERY slowly. This only happens with this group of programs. Every other program on my computer (1000 Mz Pentium III) works perfectly and quickly. Any ideas?

 

And what version of Office are you running?

 

Office 2003. But it did the same thing with the previous version also.

 

Are you running Norton AntiVirus?
There's a setting--I think under the Miscellaneous area of Norton--to turn off scanning of Office files...

 

The Norton antivirus IS tunred off. That's not the problem.

 

Okay. When's the last time you defragged your hard drive.

 

In Word disable the automatic ""Check grammar has you type""
If you have a firewall on you pc could be a issue
Synch issue with hand held device could be the case
Look for third party that requires external connection to something
also do you have macro running

 

Sorry for butting in, dreamboat, but Windows Messenger hasn't been disabled has it?

 

Please butt in, guys!

 

Quite recently. I know that's not the problem.

Steve

 

WHOA! That's it!!!! When I disabled Zone Alarm Pro, all the programs worked normally!!!!! What's the deal here? God bless you!

Steve

 

Excellent.

I was just telling putasolution how I still learn from newbies.
I never run all that stuff...

 

Sometimes, office will try to update certain component, synch some of its files.
If you have a firewall, it could possibly conflict with certain process that creates latency on your system. How did I found out ……?
Headaches , and headaches, had that issue with 2000 version .

 

Sherman8--please tell me what you did. I have the same exact problem, but in following the threads, I can't make out what you finally did that worked. Please give me the steps you followed so I can try also. Thanks.