Office 2013 Slow to Open/Save with Folder Redirection

Question

We recently deployed folder redirection for a few individuals in the office. We are using a DFS Namespace share on a Server 2012r2 VM. We are redirecting Desktop and My Documents only. Clients are running 8.1 and 7.

When using Word/Excel 2013, there is a popup that says "trying to connect to: \\DFSNAME\userfolder" and its stays there for 1-5 minutes before the browse window opens. This also occurs when trying to attach a file to an email in outlook. There are no delays if the file is double clicked on their desktop.

We've tried the following solutions (whcih seemed to describe our problem perfectly aside from the version):

• http://support2.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-US;2308870
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2816253

The only thing that is different about this deployment of Folder Redirection is permissions. Instead of following the standard checkbox of exclusive access we used this ancient guide from microsoft - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/288991/. Could our permissions be causing these weird issues?

Answer 1

Maybe you have to turn off the File Validation Feature? I've seen it many times with Office 2003 and Office 2007, but I suppose it is still part of Office 2013. You should enter the following in the user's registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Excel\Security\FileValidation
REG_DWORD: EnableOnLoad 
Value: 0

Answer 2

try to turn off option in Internet properties -> Connections -> LAN Setings -> Autmaticly detect settings (CHECK BOX need to be unchecked)

Answer 3

By my own experience, a way for me to solve this slow file load is to regularly update the data in a new workbook/document every once in a while (for me its about once a week or a month), because at some point files that are especially shared through the server cloud could not load well when data stored in a single document is too much for the server to handle. I hope this might help you or anyone else who shared the same problem.

Answer 4

Did you ever manage to get to the bottom of this? We're having this same issue with Server 2016, Office 2016 Pro Plus. Using folder redirections with a DFS namespace pointing to the location.

\\servername\staffdata$

Using \\servername instead of \\domainname doesn't make a difference, however if you delete the DFS namespace suddenly \\servername works perfectly. But obviously we can't use \\domainname without the DFS namespace.

I found that changing the DFS mode from 2008 to 2000 made some difference initially, but it is just as slow as 2008 mode now.