Very slow text entry in PowerPoint 2007 beta

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Entering text in PowerPoint 20007 beta is a chore; it is remarkably slow, a
fast typist can easily outrun the program and it renders it unusable. This
is quite a contrast from PowerPoint 2003, which, on average, was a fast
application. A member of this board suggested reducing reducing the degree
of hardware acceleration to improve performance but this did not do anything
apart from cancelling video playing in some applications. I wonder if any
users have observed this problem and if it is related to specific video cards
and drivers (I have an ATI X850). I would appreciate any comments.
 
Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is just a beta bug. You can expect the
performance level to increase substantially upon final release.

As it stands right now, just about EVERYTHING lags in the new Office suite.
Some believe it is the new "live preview" feature that is causing this lag..
it's using too many resources and is not implemented properly yet.

yeah.. expect it's a beta thing.
 
Hi ADR,

How slow? What system are you running this on? Does it happen for all
text whenever you type or are there specific cases in which it happens?
The live preview feature has probably no influence on this, as it is
only activated when you use any of the features that have Live Preview,
and not when you just type text.
This sounds more like something that is worth investigating and figuring
out why it is happening, so that MS can fix it for the next beta
release.

Patrick Schmid
 
As it stands right now, just about EVERYTHING lags in the new Office suite.
Some believe it is the new "live preview" feature that is causing this lag..
it's using too many resources and is not implemented properly yet.
Click to expand...

Did you know that you can disable live preview?

RoundOfficeLogoToLeftOfHomeTabThing. Whatever it's called. Click that.
Click Personalize.
Remove check next to Enable Live Preview.

Dead Preview livens things up a bit. ;-)
 
How slow? Terribly slow. When I type, it seems that the cursor jumps in
front, then to the back and then again in front of the letter that I am
typing. Within a few words, I have outrun the system by miles.

I am running a really fast system that is extremely stable. I am running
Win XP Pro in a top-end Intel dual-core system (850 EE) with 2 GB of RAM and
500 GB of storage (additional 500 GB are external). The video card is an ATI
X850 with 256 Mb video RAM and it is running the latest driver. McAfee
provides the Internet Security Software. I have installed Office 2007 beta
in a different directory so I still have Office 2003 installed. Neither Word
or Excel 2007 beta display the text slowdown problem, only PowerPoint.

Again, any comments will be appreciated.
 
Disabling Live Preview does not alter the behavior of Powerpoint 2007. I
tried to no avail.
 
Disabling Live Preview does not alter the behavior of Powerpoint 2007. I
tried to no avail.
Click to expand...

No, not the text stuff you've mentioned, as has been pointed out.
I was responding more to Dawgma's general post about previews.

Sorry if that sowed confusion in the rancors. <g>
 
How slow? Terribly slow. When I type, it seems that the cursor jumps
in
front, then to the back and then again in front of the letter that I am
typing. Within a few words, I have outrun the system by miles.
Click to expand...
Geez. That is 100% not a general beta performance issue. You are hitting
some serious performance problem here that MS needs to know about and
fix.
I am running a really fast system that is extremely stable. I am running
Win XP Pro in a top-end Intel dual-core system (850 EE) with 2 GB of RAM and
500 GB of storage (additional 500 GB are external). The video card is an ATI
X850 with 256 Mb video RAM and it is running the latest driver. McAfee
provides the Internet Security Software. I have installed Office 2007 beta
in a different directory so I still have Office 2003 installed. Neither Word
or Excel 2007 beta display the text slowdown problem, only PowerPoint.
Click to expand...
Your system is too good for PPT? ;)
Please try this with PPT freshly opened and by typing in the default
placeholders on the default slide that PPT opens up with.
Let's cover the obvious ones:
1. You rebooted and still have the same issue?
2. If you close all other programs (including virus scanner, spyware
scanner, etc), do you still have the issue?
3. If you switch off hardware acceleration completely, do you still have
the issue?
4. Open PPT and the Task Manager, sort processes by CPU activity
(highest first). When you type in PPT, which process has the highest CPU
usage and how much? If it's not PPT, what CPU usage does PPT show?
5. Open PPT and task Manager. This time, look at the performance tab.
How much physical memory is available while you type in PPT?

Thanks,

Patrick Schmid
 
Patrick:

Hardware acceleration changes do not help. I had done them before, I did
them again but they have little effect on the system (apart from breaking
video playing programs)

However, I examined the system and saw what was happening when typing in
Powerpoint. On the basis of single typing, CPU utilization in Powerpoint
rose to 50-70%!!! Maybe this is typical or maybe it is not -I simply do not
know- but it seems to me that there is a lot of CPU utilization for the
simple act of typing in a dual-core system. No other processes were
recording any serious activity at that time.

I contrasted this with Word 2007 beta. Typing in this application resulted
in just 2% of CPU utilization!!! There is little doubt that there is
something weird happening with PowerPoint 2007 in my system. I hope that it
gets fixed in the final version. As it is now, it is unusable.

Thanks for your efforts

I hope that this helps. As noted
 
Hi,

Does the high CPU utilization only occur when you are typing?
Do you have any add-ins loaded in PPT (PPT Options, Add-ins?)?
50-70% is nuts and an issue that needs to be fixed.
Can you type msinfo32 into Start, Run and then say File, Save? This
probably runs then for 10-15 mins. If it's done, please zip up the file
and email it to me (get my email from my website). This file represents
your computer configuration and I'd like to submit it together with your
CPU findings to MS so that they can investigate this.

Thanks,

Patrick Schmid
 
Dear Patrick

I am sending you the file. The answer to your question is "no", I have no
add-ins for PowerPoint. Yes, the CPU utilization increases exactly when I
type. And there is a difference in CPU utilization depending on the type of
slide I am creating. There is a lot more CPU utilization when I type on a
"Title and Content" -and other types that allow for bullet-based data entry
-slide compared to typing on a "Slide Title" (where CPU utilization is only
about 10%).
 
I got the file. I have submitted the bug to Microsoft and will let you
know via email once I hear back from them.

Thanks for taking the time to test this!

Patrick Schmid
 
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