A
Art Decco
I have a big spreadsheet, but it doesn't include tables, custom
formulas, lookups or iterative solver functions, or any such thing.
Lots of numbers and formulas and text. Not the sort of spreadsheet
where you would need to turn off the automatic recalc.
Most of the time, if I enter something and hit the <enter> key, it
almost immediately returns control to me after a very fast automatic
recalc. (I have a fast machine with lots of memory.) Recently, though,
it began doing something strange. I would enter a value, hit <enter>,
and it would hesitate. I would get a little "calculating cells N%"
status message down in the lower left, and it would take 5-7 seconds
to recalc.
I've built spreadsheets before that had to do humungous calculations,
and I know how to turn off the automatic recalc and recalc manually,
if needed. This shouldn't need it, though.
When this first happened, two days ago, I experienced it with a very
tiny spreadsheet. Maybe 10 numbers and one or two summations. I would
enter a number and it would give me the "calculating cells" message
for 6-7 seconds. I tried all sorts of things, without luck, but then I
tried closing the "big spreadsheet" that I'm talking about, which was
open in the background. Suddenly, the small spreadsheet was back to
snappy performance. I thought it rather odd that the small spreadsheet
would take so long to recalc just because the big one was open. There
were no links between them. In fact, there were no external links of
any sort in either of them. Why should the big one even matter, except
that it was taking up memory, of course.
Now, I'm suspecting that for some reason, when I entered data in the
small one, it did a full recalc of both the small one and the big one,
because now I have just the big one open, and it has begun doing this,
and it takes the same amount of time to recalc that the small one took
two days ago, before I closed the big one. (And yesterday, the big one
was nice and fast.)
I'm on the same machine for everything I'm describing, and it has far
fewer things open than it did yesterday, when recalc was nice and
fast. Only one Excel spreadsheet is open, and the system admin tools
show only 1% CPU usage and plenty of available memory, but this recalc
thing is at least an order of magnitude slower than usual, just as it
was a couple of days ago. And this spreadsheet was created on this
machine with this version (Excel 2002) of Excel, and I've tried
quitting and restarting several times, to no avail.
And I didn't even use it, today. I just opened it, changed the format
of one cell, saw this problem again, changed the format back, but the
problem remains. So I closed most other things, quit and restarted
Excel, but the problem is still there. And my other apps are running
at normal speed.
I hope that this is enough info for some Excel expert to recognize the
problem. Why would it sporadically require at least an order of
magnitude more time to recalc?
Thanks for any suggestions.
formulas, lookups or iterative solver functions, or any such thing.
Lots of numbers and formulas and text. Not the sort of spreadsheet
where you would need to turn off the automatic recalc.
Most of the time, if I enter something and hit the <enter> key, it
almost immediately returns control to me after a very fast automatic
recalc. (I have a fast machine with lots of memory.) Recently, though,
it began doing something strange. I would enter a value, hit <enter>,
and it would hesitate. I would get a little "calculating cells N%"
status message down in the lower left, and it would take 5-7 seconds
to recalc.
I've built spreadsheets before that had to do humungous calculations,
and I know how to turn off the automatic recalc and recalc manually,
if needed. This shouldn't need it, though.
When this first happened, two days ago, I experienced it with a very
tiny spreadsheet. Maybe 10 numbers and one or two summations. I would
enter a number and it would give me the "calculating cells" message
for 6-7 seconds. I tried all sorts of things, without luck, but then I
tried closing the "big spreadsheet" that I'm talking about, which was
open in the background. Suddenly, the small spreadsheet was back to
snappy performance. I thought it rather odd that the small spreadsheet
would take so long to recalc just because the big one was open. There
were no links between them. In fact, there were no external links of
any sort in either of them. Why should the big one even matter, except
that it was taking up memory, of course.
Now, I'm suspecting that for some reason, when I entered data in the
small one, it did a full recalc of both the small one and the big one,
because now I have just the big one open, and it has begun doing this,
and it takes the same amount of time to recalc that the small one took
two days ago, before I closed the big one. (And yesterday, the big one
was nice and fast.)
I'm on the same machine for everything I'm describing, and it has far
fewer things open than it did yesterday, when recalc was nice and
fast. Only one Excel spreadsheet is open, and the system admin tools
show only 1% CPU usage and plenty of available memory, but this recalc
thing is at least an order of magnitude slower than usual, just as it
was a couple of days ago. And this spreadsheet was created on this
machine with this version (Excel 2002) of Excel, and I've tried
quitting and restarting several times, to no avail.
And I didn't even use it, today. I just opened it, changed the format
of one cell, saw this problem again, changed the format back, but the
problem remains. So I closed most other things, quit and restarted
Excel, but the problem is still there. And my other apps are running
at normal speed.
I hope that this is enough info for some Excel expert to recognize the
problem. Why would it sporadically require at least an order of
magnitude more time to recalc?
Thanks for any suggestions.