Microsoft is set to enhance the startup speed of its Office applications, beginning with Word in May. The improvement will be driven by a new scheduled task that runs silently when a PC boots up, ensuring that Word—and eventually other Office apps—launch more 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,” Microsoft stated in a message to IT administrators.

The process allows the app to remain in a paused state after startup, resuming only when launched by the user or being removed from memory to free system resources.

Word will be the first Office app to benefit from this feature, with Microsoft confirming that additional applications will receive support in future updates. However, Startup Boost will only be available on PCs with at least 8GB of RAM and 5GB of free disk space. The feature will also be disabled when Energy Saver mode is active.

Users who prefer not to have Office apps running in the background at startup will have the option to disable Startup Boost within Word’s settings. While the scheduled task can be deleted manually, Microsoft has noted that it will be recreated during future Office updates, making in-app settings the recommended way to manage the feature.

Although Microsoft regularly employs scheduled tasks for optimizing Windows operations, this method is not commonly used by most app developers. While Google uses scheduled tasks for updating Chrome, many other applications, such as Adobe Creative Suite, rely on standard startup processes that can be disabled through Windows settings.