Microsoft is giving its Office apps a speed boost

is a senior editor and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. Microsoft is planning to improve the startup speed of its Office apps, starting with Word in May. The launch times of Office apps will improve thanks to a new scheduled task that will run silently when you boot your PC to make sure Word and eventually other Office apps open quickly. “We are introducing a new Startup Boost task from the Microsoft Office installer to optimize performance and load-time of experiences within Office applications,” explains Microsoft in a message to IT admins. “After the system performs the task, the app remains in a paused state until the app launches and the sequence resumes, or the system removes the app from memory to reclaim resources.” Word will be the first app to get this Startup Boost starting in May, and Microsoft says “support for additional applications will come in future updates.” Startup Boost will only be available for PCs ... Read full article.