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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Microsoft Word, Excel crashing while connected to Internet and VPN

another frustrating issue for those working on our laptops away from the office or at home where we need to work on a large microsoft excel spreadsheet as well as being connected to the internet network or vpn.

Basically excel will just crash when trying to save / open documents or randomly stop responding and leave you with no option but to crash your spreadsheet.

Possible Solutions

Bandwidth - this one is a bit of a no brainer, make sure that you have a steady connection between you and your network files otherwise you will working very slowly constantly waiting for files or pages to load. usually it wont be a bandwidth issue if it is , copy the files to your local computer first.

Disable Network Printer

this solution is the most common, go to your devices and printers and set your default printer to a local printer on your machine such as a PDF writer or Microsoft XPS writer, this way your Microsoft document won't be taking forever trying to communicate with a network printer you regularly use when in the office. 

For windows XP users you can try

  • Click Start > My Computer.
  • Click on Tools > Folder Options.
  • Click on View tab
  • Uncheck the first checkbox Automatically search for network folders and printers
Disable Offline Files and folders ( Windows 7 )

having offline files enabled while on the internet / vpn will use a huge amount of bandwidth especially if you didn't finish synchronizing in the office, goto control panel - sync center and disable offline files  


Turn off Network Discovery

Navigate to Control Panel - Network and Sharing Center - Click Advanced Settings on the left


here you will see a list of network profiles, expand them out to disable

- turn off network discovery
- turn off file and printer sharing
- turn off public folders

remember to select this under the type of profile selected for your internet connection , either home/work , public etc..

Disable Recent Files in Excel

this usually wont do much , but it wont hurt to speed up your excel a bit


goto TOOLS - > OPTIONS  -> General  and Uncheck “Recently use file list”