Office File Validation Add-in Causes Excel 2003 Workbooks to open slower over networks

In an enterprise environment this is an understatement - test KB2501584 very carefully. During each patching cycle we roll out patches to about 400 workstations for testing in order to QA the deployment. Shortly after deploying the latest round of Microsoft patches we started to get reports of Excel 2003 would stop responding when trying to open up files across the network. Local workbooks were fine. When the exact symptoms were identified it wasn’t long before I found a Microsoft knowledgebase article outlining the same symptoms and referencing the Office File Validation Add-in (OFV) as the culprit.

Office 2007 and 2010 will copy the file locally and then validate it to see if it is safe to open. Office 2003 tries to complete this process across the network. A workbook that normally takes seconds to open was taking upwards of 10 – 15 minutes if the user had Excel 2003. (Keep in mind that this is across a well connected LAN)

Microsoft has published a workaround but as I quickly found out it had little effect. The registry key that is referenced in KB2570623:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\

According to this post should be:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\11.0

And then follow the steps outlined below:

1. After you select the key that is specified in step 3, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.
2. Type Excel, and then press ENTER.
3. Select Excel, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.
4. Type Security, and then press ENTER.
5. Select Security, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click Key.
6. Type FileValidation, and then press ENTER.
7. Select FileValidation, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click DWORD Value.
8. Type EnableOnLoad, and then press ENTER. (Note: The default value is 0 which disables the validation)

Once the correct key has been added to the user’s profile, workbooks will open normally using Excel 2003. Long story short upgrade to Office 2010.