Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Speed up Open Office!

Open Office is pretty slow and painful to use out of the box.  This simple step by step procedure speeds up the software, making it much more pleasant to use.

Open OOo (I use writer for this process). Select Tools -> Options. Select Memory.

Number Of Steps: 20
Use for OpenOffice.org: 128
Memory Per Object: 20
Number Of Objects: 20
Enable Quickstarter: Checked

Select Java.
Use a JRE: Checked (Alternately, Uncheck if you do not have Sun Java installed)
Select the radio button of the appropriate Java Engine if needed.

Click OK
Close OOo

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you using the latest (3.2)?

I find Oo.o to be quite swift on my computer (though it's a powerful one).

Typically I wait 1~2 seconds more than for the monopoly's word processor (that may be the reason Quickstarter no longer come as default).

Those developers surely have done a good job... for which I'm thankful!

FEWT said...

3.2, yes. I'm not sure why it was important to bring up Microsoft, this is a how-to for Open Office not MS Office.

With tuning, OOo opens in < 1 second where previously it opened in 10. Documents also open in 1/10th the time, and visible lag is also gone. I have been using these tweaks on very low powered machines for a long time so I know that they work well.

No doubt the developers are doing a good job, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for additional improvement.

tomw said...

exceptional tip. thanks. worked great.

Anonymous said...

great, work perfectly

Anonymous said...

This worked great on my 5 year old computer, OO opens up about 10x as fast now!

jef said...

i was wondering if that could be used for headless openoffices as well. i use them a lot on my servers...

jef

Anonymous said...

Does OO require Java for all users, or can I disable this? If optional, how can I tell if I need it? Will disabling it save time/memory?

Thank you.

FEWT said...

@Jef - It may with the exception of the quick start.

@anonymous - Java is only needed for wizards, if you don't use the wizards it can be disabled.

Anonymous said...

Nice!! Thanks for the tip!

Anonymous said...

Great tip!! Yes Open office and any application(word processor, spreadsheet and so on) after the applied setting changes worked at least 5x faster if not more..

stomfi said...

Fantastic tip. I install Linux on older Windows P4 512MB machines mostly used for word processing and web browsing. This tip makes my users even happier. Thanks a lot.

Martín said...

Hi.
i'm on openoffice 3.2 and there's no "quick start" option to be selected.

Maybe it has been moved somewhere else?

PD: Sorry for my english. I'm not a native speaker.

Ronald said...

Quickstarter causes my computer to hang on shutdown. I disabled that feature. I disabled the splash screen [as root](/etc/openoffice/sofficerc and edit the line Logo=1 to Logo=0). This, with Fewt's tweaks make OOo pretty fast.

John Piers Cilliers said...

All I can say is "holy crap" it now opens instantly on my PC! Thanks a ton!
Piers

Scottlouie said...

Your a Superstar - Thanks

Mark said...

Works on Libre Office 3.3.2 like a dream. Used to take almost a minute on my first gen netbook. Now it's a matter of seconds.

jeffreyC said...

Another speed tip for OpenOffice or LibreOffice is to turn off the splash when it is loading, it is an extra process that only slows down loading.