Word: Document opens very slowly or not at all

Problem:

I had a couple of Word 2003 documents that took an age to open on my machine and I didn’t know why.

Scenario:

I’d transferred these docs from a client’s network drive to my local drive, then closed the VPN session had opened so that I could access them. And that was part of the problem! These Word documents had templates attached that referenced a server location on the client’s network (e.g. \\<servername>\<path>).

Solution:

I re-established the VPN connection, and then these documents opened quickly and without fuss.

The things you learn the hard way… At least I didn’t have to reinstall Word.