Pages, Keynote, Numbers files slow to open on iCloud

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Level 1

5 points

Pages, Keynote, Numbers files slow to open on iCloud

Pages, Keynote, and Numbers files in a shared icloud folder are taking 20 to 40 seconds to open. Preview, MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel files in the same shared folder open instantly. If I turn off my wifi while it is opening, it will often solve the problem.

My internet is fast and I am not running a VPN, antivirus or cleaner program. This has been going on for a long time (multiple reboots for other reasons).

I tried apple support. They had me forget my wifi network and reconnect. This fixed the problem for files I had just opened before but not for files I hadn't touched in a while.

If this were just an issue of shared folder files taking longer, wouldn't it be the same for Preview and MS files? Any help would be appreciated.

System information:

iMac M3 with 304 GB empty storage
Sequoia 15.7.1
Pages/Numbers/Keynote 14.4
Wifi 200-300 MBps
iCloud 1TB of unused storage

Posted on Dec 1, 2025 4:28 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 8, 2025 2:12 AM in response to Scasey67

Turn off "Optimize Mac Storage"

This is the #1 solution for most users.

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Answer 2

Scasey67 Author

Level 1

5 points

Dec 8, 2025 6:12 AM in response to azaksalmarzur28

Thanks! I was hoping it wasn't this, as my hard drive is almost full and I didn't want to add more external storage, but I guess that is the fix. I appreciate your time.

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Answer 3

den.thed

Level 10

90,874 points

Dec 8, 2025 9:11 AM in response to Scasey67

iCloud is not the fix for an almost full internal storage drive.

What you can do, is move a large Library like your Photos, Music or Movie Library to an external hard drive.

Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support

Move your iMovie for Mac library - Apple Support

Then keep Pages, Keynote, Numbers, MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel doc's and files on your internal storage drive.

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