Word automation extremely slow sometimes

We have implemented a word printing facility in our program. It
basically consists of a word template (with tokens) that the user can
edit themselves. Then if they want to print an invoice for example they
can select a template and an invoice rolls out the printer. We open the
document in foxpro (version 7) and then search for the tokens that need
to be replaced with the actual values.

This all works well but for some reason we now have a problem on some
computers. We have a few customers which report that on some computers
the process of making the document takes a few minutes instead of the
few seconds it takes on other computers. We have tried to simulate the
problem here on our test machines but at first we couldn't reproduce
the problem. Untill one of us got a new pc. At first it was as fast as
normal (few seconds), then after some windows updates and installation
of other programs it suddenly took minutes on that machine. We also had
reports of customers who installed word 2003 and where the problem was
gone.

We tried everything from reinstalling word till whatever but we can't
figure out why it takes seconds on 1 pc and minutes on the other.

Does anyone have ideas or has had similar problems ?

Fred
Tue Oct 11 10:13:56 CDT 2005

Possibly Anti-virus software checking the docs?

--
Fred
Microsoft Visual FoxPro MVP


"Chrizz" <chris@po-software.nl> wrote in message
news:1129019170.819411.108730@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> We have implemented a word printing facility in our program. It
> basically consists of a word template (with tokens) that the user can
> edit themselves. Then if they want to print an invoice for example they
> can select a template and an invoice rolls out the printer. We open the
> document in foxpro (version 7) and then search for the tokens that need
> to be replaced with the actual values.
>
> This all works well but for some reason we now have a problem on some
> computers. We have a few customers which report that on some computers
> the process of making the document takes a few minutes instead of the
> few seconds it takes on other computers. We have tried to simulate the
> problem here on our test machines but at first we couldn't reproduce
> the problem. Untill one of us got a new pc. At first it was as fast as
> normal (few seconds), then after some windows updates and installation
> of other programs it suddenly took minutes on that machine. We also had
> reports of customers who installed word 2003 and where the problem was
> gone.
>
> We tried everything from reinstalling word till whatever but we can't
> figure out why it takes seconds on 1 pc and minutes on the other.
>
> Does anyone have ideas or has had similar problems ?
>

Dan
Tue Oct 11 10:47:49 CDT 2005

Are you reusing the same instance of Word each time?

If you're not sure, do check it out. It's pretty easy to grab a new instance
of Word for each document (and not know you're doing it), leaving each
running copy of Word floating around in memory. That'll slow things down for
sure. <g>

Dan


Chrizz wrote:
> We have implemented a word printing facility in our program. It
> basically consists of a word template (with tokens) that the user can
> edit themselves. Then if they want to print an invoice for example
> they can select a template and an invoice rolls out the printer. We
> open the document in foxpro (version 7) and then search for the
> tokens that need to be replaced with the actual values.
>
> This all works well but for some reason we now have a problem on some
> computers. We have a few customers which report that on some computers
> the process of making the document takes a few minutes instead of the
> few seconds it takes on other computers. We have tried to simulate the
> problem here on our test machines but at first we couldn't reproduce
> the problem. Untill one of us got a new pc. At first it was as fast as
> normal (few seconds), then after some windows updates and installation
> of other programs it suddenly took minutes on that machine. We also
> had reports of customers who installed word 2003 and where the
> problem was gone.
>
> We tried everything from reinstalling word till whatever but we can't
> figure out why it takes seconds on 1 pc and minutes on the other.
>
> Does anyone have ideas or has had similar problems ?