Word hangs when opening files from SharePoint 2007 in WebDAV
I have the following situation: · A MOSS2007 environment with all service packs and cumulative updates as far as I know · A managed client environment with: o Windows XP Pro SP3 o MS Office 2007 o Internet Explorer 7 The problem: When opening Word documents from a WebDAV share, Word often takes a very long time to open the document (15-20 minutes). During this time, both MS Word and the Windows explorer are unresponsive. The only way out of this without waiting is to give my machine a hard reset. Now when a document has been opened once, the second time it will not show this behavior anymore. If I open another document though, the whole hanging starts again. What I tried: Tracing HTTP requests: It appears the problems start before any http requests have been made from Word Disabling DDE: I have tried to disable the DDE integration in the open command. This had no effect Tracing DDE calls: I can see that somewhere in the call stack a call is made [DDE-EXECUTE] Cmd=”[“. This is where Word starts to hang. I have no clue what to make of this I have tried removing all startup templates from Word. This had no effect. Alternative scenario’s that do work: Opening the file with FrontPage extentions is no problem First opening MS Word and dragging and dropping the file from the WebDAV share into Word also gives no problems. After that the file can be opened without problems, also directly from WebDAV. The problem is that we have 60.000 people working with this environment, and we cannot explain these workarounds to them all. Has anybody a suggestion on what might cause this strange behavior and how it could be resmlved? /Klaas
May 23rd, 2011 5:45pm

Have you attempted to open the document via the web page? It would be interesting to see if the behavior is the same. If the problem is happening before word makes its request, it may not be a problem with SharePoint. You could be seeing it client side. Also, when you say "when a document has been opened once, the second time it will not show this behavior anymore" does that mean permentantly, or just until a restart of the client? I also might test this while monitoring the performance of the SharePoint server just to see if there are any wierd performance problems while attempting this operation.
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May 23rd, 2011 6:05pm

Hi Rick, thanks for the reply. I do indeed suspect the client configuration, hence my uncertainty if this is the correct forum. Opening the document from the web page is no problem. Once a document has been opened, it will open quickly the next time, even after a reboot. It looks like MS Word has cached the correct location of the document or its dependencies.
May 23rd, 2011 11:21pm

I was able to resolve a similar issue. I had two users that were either unable to open documents (doc(x), xls(x), and pdfs) from Sharepoint or for example the application would hang at contacting server but would eventually open the requested document. These machines were running Windows 7 and also had VMPlayer installed on them for a Server 2003 OS and Windows XP OS. The host OS (Windows 7) was on a 172.16.x.x network, and the virtual machines (Server 2003 and Windows XP) were on a "192.168.x.x network" The first fix that I tried was to add an entry into the host file of the local machine to point to the Sharepoint server. This worked temporarily. After I closed the browser and tried to reconnect to Sharepoint, I received the “page cannot be displayed” error in IE 8. I probably could’ve resolved this but did not waste time in doing so. Now for the 2<sup>nd</sup> fix, remember that I said that the machines were running VMPlayer. When you install VMPlayer, it creates a “VMware (Virtual) Network Adapter”. I disabled the “VMware Network Adapter” for both the Server 2003 Virtual Machine and for the Windows XP Virtual Machine, and this resolved my problem. You may not have VM Player or VMware installed, but checked to see if you have any VPN clients installed, and if they have a network adapter present, as a test, try disabling those and then try retrieving your documents from Sharepoint. Moderator Note: NEVER propose your own posts as answers. The function is there so you can propose the good answers of other people. NOT your own.
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July 12th, 2011 9:02pm

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