Parallels and Office 2013 performance tips

Parallels and Office 2013 issues

After installing Office 2013 into my Parallels Desktop (Win 7) I’ve realised that performance has decreased significantly. I could see that it was clearly related to some new animation effects and with the help of my friend Google I’ve found 2 small changes that made a huge difference. Both are described below.

Office display options change

Open World 2013 and follow these steps:

1. Go to the ‘File’ tab and click on options.
2. On the ‘Word Options’ window click on ‘Advanced’.
3. Scroll down to the ‘Display’ section and change the following:
   • Check ‘Disable hardware graphics acceleration’ box
   • Uncheck ‘Use subpixel positioning to smooth fonts on screen’

The changes applied to Word will reflect in all other Office applications.

Disable Office animations

1. Using Register Editor (regedit.exe), go to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Graphics
2. Create new DWORD named ‘DisableAnimations’ and set its value to ‘1’ (as shown below)

Please let me know if you have any more performance tips!