Why is the first copy and paste into Excel 2007 getting slower?

[sandpip6]

I have an HP Notebook running Vista Home Premium. I have Office 2007. All
software is up to date. Every day i copy and paste several cells of data from
a website into an excel spreadsheet. I am simply copy and pasting a single
number from the html to one cell in the sheet. Over the last month however
the initial paste has taken longer and longer to finish. Where it used to
take about 3 seconds, now it is taking about 3 minutes! Subsequent copy and
pastes go quicker but are still longer than they used to be. I thought it
might be my firewall/virus protection so i removed it but the problem still
remains. Help?

 

[Joel]

Before pasting data in the cell select cell and hit delete to remove old
data. for some reason some data is staying in the cell and the size of the
cell is getting larger. Check the file size of excel and see if it is
getting bigger. There are tools available on the web that cleans up an excel
workbook.

 

[sandpip6]

Thanks Joel. But i have just tested 3 ways that make me believe that the
problem is not in the spreadsheet: 1) pasted the data to an empty cell way
down the sheet and still very slow; 2) pasted the data to a brand new sheet
and still slow; 3) pasted data from a different source to the sheet and still
slow. Therefore i believe the problem is not with the spreadsheet or the data
but rather with excel in general, common files or the clipboard. Thoughts?

peter

 

[Joel]

did you try a new workbook? Also look at clip boar and make sure it is empty.

2007 Home - clipboard

2003 View - TaskPane then select clip board.

 

[sandpip6]

Yes tried new workbook same result. Emptied clipboard, same result. Ahh!

 

[sandpip6]

And I just tried the same spreadsheet on a different computer and the problem
doesnt exist, ie it was fast. So i guess the problem is with excel and maybe
i need to run repair or reinstall.

 

[Joel]

I don't think the problem is with excel. Re-installing may work, but most
times it doesn't help. The problem is probably wih the file system or
memory. I've had problems iwth ofice product running slow when Inexing was
turned on the hard drive. When auto-backup in excel is turned on excel save
a copy of the file on the hard drive. If writes to hard drive are slow then
excel runs slow.

The workbook is normally save in memory when the workbook is opened. If
your PC doesn't have enough memory to hold the workbook then the workbook is
saved in swap memory space which is on the hard drive. You mey have a memory
problem. If you open the task manager while the workbook is opened you can
watch the memory usage to determine if there is sufficientmemory to hold the
workbook.

 

[sandpip6]

My laptop has 2gb of RAM and until a month or so ago this sheet was
performing fine. Also, i have further isolated the problem. If i do a paste
specail and choose text it pastes instantly. If i leave as paste or paste as
html (which is what the source was) it slows down. So somehow the problem is
related only to pasting as html. ??

 

[Joel]

I'm not a n expert on the guts of excel. Not sure if excel could get
corrupted in this fashion. Still think it has to do with memory. I would
try with other office products.

I would also try with wordpad. Try saving a blnk wordpad document and check
the file size. Then paste special with different methods and compare the
file size. This would let you know how much data is being pasted.