Given a machine with 8 GB memory and a Quad-Core CPU (>3 GHz AMD FX-4100) LibreOffice Version 4.3.7.2 with default settings is slow when loading/initialising files.
There is a 3 year old openSUSE 12.2 thread which also addresses this issue: it appears near the top of an Internet Web search for “LibreOffice slow load”.
To answer my own question, I have discovered that the following works wonders:
[ul]
[li]Increase the memory used for graphic caching: [/li][/ul]
[INDENT=2]Options; LibreOffice; Memory:
[/INDENT]
[LIST=1|INDENT=3]
[li]Increase the amount of Graphics Cache to at least 128 MB [I’m currently using the maximum allowed: 256 MB] [/li][li]Increase the amount of memory per object to at least 16 MB [I’m currently using 32 MB] [/li][li]Possibly also increase the maximum number of OLE Objects allowed in cache [I’m currently using 50] [/li][/LIST]
This solution also considerably improves this issue on Quad-Core (>2 GHz) AMD Laptop with 8 GB memory running Leap 42.1.