---
title: Fix severe delays when loading Excel 2003 files from network drives
date: 2012-06-01
topics: Excel
---

I was recently made aware of a problem where Excel 2003 would take several
minutes to load a spreadsheet from a network drive. What made it even worse was
that several of these sheets were referenced inside a CAD drawing (meaning
AutoCAD would open Excel in the background for each spreadsheet referenced), and
the load delay for each individual spreadsheet made it was near-impossible for
the drawing to *ever* finish loading.

I found three possible solutions to the problem.

The first (which I used) was to create or modify the following registry key
using `regedit`:

```
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Security\FileValidation]
"EnableOnLoad"=dword:00000000
```

The second option is to uninstall the Microsoft Office File Validation Add-in
from the Control Panel.

The third is to upgrade to Excel 2007 or later.