Excel 2010 - "File Open" issue

[BubbaDog]

I'm usually answering Excel questions in this forum instead of asking them but I've noticed a recent problem and I hope some Dopers can at least validate it if not help me make a fix.

Monday, after updating two computers running Windows 7 I noticed that Excel 2010 seems to have a hitch in it.

The application opens just fine, but then when I click the file link on the ribbon it takes 10 seconds to pop up a menu box. Loading files, processing files etc are just like they were before. No speed or processing issues.

But this long delay in going from "click" to menu is maddening. It's so long that I frequently have double/triple/quadruple clicked thinking I somehow missed the hyperlink target or something. That of course just makes it ignore my click or extend the wait until the menu pops up.

Has anyone else experienced the same problem?

Search Engines haven't helped other than to show that there was a similar problem caused by Microsoft File validation. But that problem occurred on file loading, not in an application's menu system.

[redtail23]

I thought mine was running slow like that yesterday, but it seems fine today. Dunno.

W7 64 bit, Office 2010.

[BubbaDog]

Maybe I should get the title of this changed to "Bubbadog is a Doofus"

I found and fixed the problem. It had nothing to do with the MS updates.

I was trying to remember if I had done anything else out of the usual recently and remembered that I had used Excel to open about six or seven XML files that were large and had no mapping to them.

After waiting 10 seconds for the file menu to show up I went to "recent" file menu and "right clicked" on each of the XML files names displayed there. The right click brought up a small menu that included the option to "remove from list".

I removed each XML file from the list.

Now the file menu pops up immediately when I click on it. I closed and reopened Excel and got the same happy result.

On PC number two I also removed the XML files from the list and got the same improvement in timing.

So it looks like the menu was delayed while Excel tried to do some kind of identification process on the XML files.

Good to know for the future in case I ever see this again.

[TroutMan]

It might not just be you being a doofus. There was an Excel security update released May 7 that has caused people performance issues in certain cases (see here). There was another thread on this board from someone having trouble importing data from text files. It's possible there was some interaction between your XML files and this security update.

If all is working OK now, don't worry about it. But if you see other oddities, you might want to remove that update.

[BubbaDog]

Thanks for the info Troutman.

I use Excel so much that I'm always happy to get any information on operating issues .