MS Office 2016 so slow

Hendri Hendri

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Hello,

I just installed MS Office 2016 on my mac mini (late 2014 - OS High Sierra)

Problem is, it's very slow just to open outlook and excel. For outlook, I'm using exchange account (with login startup)

Anyone experienced this ? I can't work because it's so slow, and it impact to others (while loading outlook particularly)

Thx
 

Just_Me_D

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I have Office 2016 running on a 2015 model MacBook Air (Work-issued) that's running macOS High Sierra without any issues. Apps load fine, in my opinion.
 

Lee_Bo

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I have a mid 2011 Mac Mini on my desk, i5 processor @2.3 ghz, and 8 gigs of ram. Office 2016 runs just fine, Exchange email account.
 

Hendri Hendri

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Is it my ram is too low ? (4gb)

I have no issue on my macbook air (4gb ram) though ..... (on excel has some serious lagging if I’m on huge data processing file, but for outlook has no issue at all for the lagging or slow startup)

Tried to reinstall the office 2016 and have same issue ....
 

Just_Me_D

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Is it my ram is too low ? (4gb)

I have no issue on my macbook air (4gb ram) though ..... (on excel has some serious lagging if I’m on huge data processing file, but for outlook has no issue at all for the lagging or slow startup)

Tried to reinstall the office 2016 and have same issue ....

I would say it is. There's 8 gigs of RAM on my work-issued MacBook Air and it performs very well.
 

iN8ter

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It would be interesting to know:

1. What kind of storage the people who say it's "fine" are running their system on Mechanical 5.4k/7.2k HDD, Fusion, SATA or NVMe SSD), and
2. What exactly does "fine" mean? For me, fine is like a 3-4 second load time on Microsoft Word... off of a 5,400 RPM Mechanical drive...

That's what I get on a Mid-2013 model AMD Laptop with a 5,400 RPM drive running Windows 10; so, not a high benchmark.

My Late 2013 iMac with 5,400 RPM drive boots about 4-5x slower than the older Windows Laptop. Loads applications 2-3x slower as well. Even iTunes loads much faster on that weaker Windows Machine, off of that slow HDD, than iTunes on my iMac.

The difference is stark.

It has to do with Mechanical HDD de-optimization. Performance degrades on HDD Macs, which is why Apple has been aggressive with SSDs and Hybrid Storage systems. This is not an issue with Windows systems, because:

1. Windows Disk Optimizer Exists
2. Windows Schedules Drives to Be Optimized, Automatically, Weekly
3. The OS will Automatically Defragment, Relocate (Optimize File Order), and Consolidate (Remove Gaps) when it runs this in the background (when the PC is idle)

So, HDDs in Windows machines (barring Hardware issues) continue to run at near optimal performance levels - but not so for Macs. This process turns application loading and booting into predominantly sequential read operations, since it will keep directory structures in largely contiguous, defragmented blocks on the HDD. This is optimal for mechanical HDDs, which perform best when they can read and write data sequentially.

macOS will perform much better on an SSD, because SSDs avoid the issues it has on mechanical drives with amazing Random R/W performance and very low latency... (cause no R/W head to move).

If the OP is running the Mac mini off of a HDD, then he should upgrade it to an SSD (if Possible). If it has 4GB RAM, definitely upgrade to 8. 4 is not enough, IMO. OSes like macOS and Windows 10 are designed for 8GB+ systems. The OS uses 2.5-3GB of RAM after a Fresh Boot, so you're at the mercy of the SWAP file if you have less - which means your performance is going to suffer on a HDD system due to the storage medium the SWAP file resides on being quite slow.

Never buy a Mac with a HDD of any type (Fusion or otherwise - avoid them).

Buy with a smaller SSD (i.e. 256GB) and just augment with external bulk storage, which is cheap. On smaller SSDs, you can save a lot of room by simply deleting apps like Pages, Numbers, Keynote, GarageBand, and iMovie - depending on what you use (someone with Office 2016 doesn't need any iWork apps, for example).

I don't think a Mac is worth it [at all], if you cannot afford to get it with All-SSD Storage, personally.
 
Last edited:

Hendri Hendri

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It would be interesting to know:

1. What kind of storage the people who say it's "fine" are running their system on Mechanical 5.4k/7.2k HDD, Fusion, SATA or NVMe SSD), and
2. What exactly does "fine" mean? For me, fine is like a 3-4 second load time on Microsoft Word... off of a 5,400 RPM Mechanical drive...

That's what I get on a Mid-2013 model AMD Laptop with a 5,400 RPM drive running Windows 10; so, not a high benchmark.

My Late 2013 iMac with 5,400 RPM drive boots about 4-5x slower than the older Windows Laptop. Loads applications 2-3x slower as well. Even iTunes loads much faster on that weaker Windows Machine, off of that slow HDD, than iTunes on my iMac.

The difference is stark.

It has to do with Mechanical HDD de-optimization. Performance degrades on HDD Macs, which is why Apple has been aggressive with SSDs and Hybrid Storage systems. This is not an issue with Windows systems, because:

1. Windows Disk Optimizer Exists
2. Windows Schedules Drives to Be Optimized, Automatically, Weekly
3. The OS will Automatically Defragment, Relocate (Optimize File Order), and Consolidate (Remove Gaps) when it runs this in the background (when the PC is idle)

So, HDDs in Windows machines (barring Hardware issues) continue to run at near optimal performance levels - but not so for Macs. This process turns application loading and booting into predominantly sequential read operations, since it will keep directory structures in largely contiguous, defragmented blocks on the HDD. This is optimal for mechanical HDDs, which perform best when they can read and write data sequentially.

macOS will perform much better on an SSD, because SSDs avoid the issues it has on mechanical drives with amazing Random R/W performance and very low latency... (cause no R/W head to move).

If the OP is running the Mac mini off of a HDD, then he should upgrade it to an SSD (if Possible). If it has 4GB RAM, definitely upgrade to 8. 4 is not enough, IMO. OSes like macOS and Windows 10 are designed for 8GB+ systems. The OS uses 2.5-3GB of RAM after a Fresh Boot, so you're at the mercy of the SWAP file if you have less - which means your performance is going to suffer on a HDD system due to the storage medium the SWAP file resides on being quite slow.

Never buy a Mac with a HDD of any type (Fusion or otherwise - avoid them).

Buy with a smaller SSD (i.e. 256GB) and just augment with external bulk storage, which is cheap. On smaller SSDs, you can save a lot of room by simply deleting apps like Pages, Numbers, Keynote, GarageBand, and iMovie - depending on what you use (someone with Office 2016 doesn't need any iWork apps, for example).

I don't think a Mac is worth it [at all], if you cannot afford to get it with All-SSD Storage, personally.

I understand RAM 4GB has the minimum spec for today computer, but too bad I cannot upgrade to 8GB. And yes, HDD has impact to the speed as well. Not sure if macmini late 2014's HDD can be upgraded to SDD. Do you happened to know if it's possible ?

at the end, if I don't use any MS office, the mac is running smoothly and with no issue. My apple mail has no issue at all, tried thunderbird and airmal, neither of them impact to my mac. Only outlook / MS Office 2016 takes a lot of the recources from my mac just to launch, download email, and processing. And the worst is, it freeze my mac for some times.

Don't know whether it can be said that the MS office is the problem (needs big resources) or my Mac is too outdated.

dammed MS Office to became such a standard in office tool
 

Just_Me_D

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It would be interesting to know:

1. What kind of storage the people who say it's "fine" are running their system on Mechanical 5.4k/7.2k HDD, Fusion, SATA or NVMe SSD),
My work-issued 2015 MacBook Air is using a 256 GB SSD drive.
and
2. What exactly does "fine" mean? For me, fine is like a 3-4 second load time on Microsoft Word... off of a 5,400 RPM Mechanical drive...

...
Our definition of “fine” are similar. In addition, there isn’t any spinning circles and I can have numerous browser tabs and apps running simultaneously without any slow downs.
 

iN8ter

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finally, I upgrade my macmini hdd to ssd, and the MS office finally works smoothly. So the problem is the hdd ....

As expected. Personally, Macs are fine as long as you have an SSD or the app is cached to Fusion. Performance is bad off of laptop drives.

That has been my experience. I’m not sure why that technically is. It may have something to do with how macOS loads the libraries that an application needs, or if/how it prefetches.

Office is slow to load off of my iMac. Faster in Windows Boot Camp. 2-3x faster, off the same storage/hardware.
 

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