I have an i7 SP4 and have been using battery consumption issues. Yesterday I went (according to Powercfg report) from 89% to 36% battery just using PowerPoint and OneNote for 72 minutes. For much of the time I was simply showing slides. I called Microsoft support and was advised to uninstall and reinstall Office. Does this make sense? Any other ideas as to how I can troubleshoot?
89% to 36% battery just using PowerPoint and OneNote for 72 minutes
- Thread starter RDA
- Start date
-
- Tags
- battery drain
leeshor
Well-Known Member
Welcome to the forum
You left some info out like the version of Office but if it's 2016 or 365 then the answer is yes, some people have found that uninstalling, cleaning the disk up and installing again has corrected some battery drain issues. But there may be lots of other things going on. How long have you had your Surface? What is your actual normal/usual run time?
You left some info out like the version of Office but if it's 2016 or 365 then the answer is yes, some people have found that uninstalling, cleaning the disk up and installing again has corrected some battery drain issues. But there may be lots of other things going on. How long have you had your Surface? What is your actual normal/usual run time?
Thanks. Yes. I had Office 2016 installed. By cleaning the disk up do you mean running the Disk Clean-up utility? Assuming so, am running it now.
I have had my SP4 since December. I mainly use it plugged into a dock and thus on power. I don't think I have ever got more than three hours on battery. I mainly use Office and Edge with Outlook and PowerPoint (displaying presentations) and OneNote the most frequent when on battery. (Edit: I ask have Dropbox, Evernote and Gotomeeting running in the background]
I have re-downloaded Office and will now re-install. Fingers crossed!
Anything else I should try? I assume it is not a hardware issue. But the battery life is so much worse than I was expecting and given the units sold I would have expected to find more on the web if this is a general issue.
I have had my SP4 since December. I mainly use it plugged into a dock and thus on power. I don't think I have ever got more than three hours on battery. I mainly use Office and Edge with Outlook and PowerPoint (displaying presentations) and OneNote the most frequent when on battery. (Edit: I ask have Dropbox, Evernote and Gotomeeting running in the background]
I have re-downloaded Office and will now re-install. Fingers crossed!
Anything else I should try? I assume it is not a hardware issue. But the battery life is so much worse than I was expecting and given the units sold I would have expected to find more on the web if this is a general issue.
Last edited:
What type of PowerPoint? how large? Lots of Animations? Embedded Video? How is OneNote configured? Have you enabled Pressure Sensitivity? What is the Battery Settings adjusted too? Were you inking on blank pages or printed pages? Have you installed Chrome on the device? Were any tabs Open?
Dropbox (desktop) and Goto Meeting will drain battery if running.
We need much more info....
Dropbox (desktop) and Goto Meeting will drain battery if running.
We need much more info....
Thank you for replying and helping.
My PowerPoints are typically about 18 MB. They are mainly screenshots (hence the size). There are no animations, videos or audio.
I use the Office 2016 version of OneNote and this has local copies of my notes plus syncs to my personal live.com storage area.
I don't believe that I have enabled pressure sensitivity (do you mean the stylus?). In reality I mainly use it for pointing at the display as my handwriting is so bad!
I have display and sleep at 5 minutes when on battery (the default) although I believe that PowerPoint overrides this. I have now reduced brightness although I believe that I was previously using the default settings.
I was making notes on what started as blank OneNote pages.
I have Chrome on the computer but typically don't use it. I tend to use the default Edge unless there is a problem with it and a particular site.
Evernote, dropbox, gootmeeting, defender will run in the background. I have the full Adobe suite installed but am unlikely to use it (other than Acrobat) when on battery.
My device is the i7 with 8 gb ram and 256 gb storage.
I keep up to date with patches and have just installed the cumulative SP4 firmware patch installer.
Anything else that will be helpful?
My PowerPoints are typically about 18 MB. They are mainly screenshots (hence the size). There are no animations, videos or audio.
I use the Office 2016 version of OneNote and this has local copies of my notes plus syncs to my personal live.com storage area.
I don't believe that I have enabled pressure sensitivity (do you mean the stylus?). In reality I mainly use it for pointing at the display as my handwriting is so bad!
I have display and sleep at 5 minutes when on battery (the default) although I believe that PowerPoint overrides this. I have now reduced brightness although I believe that I was previously using the default settings.
I was making notes on what started as blank OneNote pages.
I have Chrome on the computer but typically don't use it. I tend to use the default Edge unless there is a problem with it and a particular site.
Evernote, dropbox, gootmeeting, defender will run in the background. I have the full Adobe suite installed but am unlikely to use it (other than Acrobat) when on battery.
My device is the i7 with 8 gb ram and 256 gb storage.
I keep up to date with patches and have just installed the cumulative SP4 firmware patch installer.
Anything else that will be helpful?
Excellent additional info:
Here would be the applications that tend to be the biggest culprits with your system:
Chrome keeps itself loaded and prevents the CPU from resting, typically will impact battery life by 25-50% (even when not in Use)
Evernote, Dropbox typically sync in the background synchronously
Acrobat includes Adobe Updater which continually runs in the background
Edge without using HOST File Ad blocking tends to use lots of resources
leeshor
Well-Known Member
The thing about Chrome is that if it's installed but not in use it consumes battery and memory. If you really want to use Edge you may also want to turn it's background task off. It will still run if you need it but you should also add a modified host file to filter ads. Both IE and Chrome will install Flash when/if needed and Flash ads eat battery.
@jnjroach pretty much covered much everything else.
@jnjroach pretty much covered much everything else.
Philtastic
Active Member
I don't seem to have that problem with Chrome which is what I've been using for about 2 months now, even when it's open (with AdBlock), but, then again, I mostly go to sites that are pretty simple without obnoxious ads or loads of scripts running so that might impact the behaviour of Chrome on my system.
Anyone ever get a solution to the issue with powerpoint? I have an issue were the battery is at 100% and I'm just going to a few meetings showing powerpoint slides and within 2 hours its dropped to under 50%. Battery Use shows powerpoint as the app consuming the most power.
Any feedback is appreciated.
Any feedback is appreciated.
Which version of PowerPoint are you using? 2013 or 2016? Also, if you use the Mobile version while on battery you should see better battery life....
