It was suggested that I take a look at this site in regards to the KB972596 hotfix. We are having some pausing when opening spreadsheets from within Outlook 2007 if we already have a spreadsheet open. This is related to a addin, but at this stage it looks like the addin could be more of the catalyst than the fault. Is this hot fix for 2003 as well as 2008 and Vista?
Well, KB972596 itself is only for Vista and 2008, and talks about "...may stop responding when one or more applications or services access the shared resources by using the SMB protocol". This doesn't sound wholly related to your issue.
A workaround is also given: "To work around the issue, you can disable the opportunistic locking (oplock). To do this, follow the steps in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296264/ - Configuring opportunistic locking in Windows"
This covers Op Locking (2003 too) : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296264
Mark, Thanks heaps for your reply. I will take a look and let you know how I go.
No problem - yep, please do keep me posted. Thanks.