I have an MS Excel file that I use to keep monthly totals and the corresponding graphics in. Today I used it to update the monthly totals (productivity, expenses and what not) and it was slower then molasses in Janyeeary. That is, to update any given cell, takes forever, to right click any options is a test in sanity, and when it comes time to save, well, best click on save and go have a ciggie because it takes its time. Now all was well Friday, and the file is only 61kb,
So, any ideas out there about how to fix it? The only thing different about the system is that Friday I installed a different printer, I had an HP680c and changed to an HP610c, basically the same printer.
System is a PIII, 800mhz, 128meg ram, 20 gig HD, I ran the most recent versions of Norton AV as well as AD-AWARE and nothing was found, there has been no other updates to the system since I used it last (and the archive) on Friday? BTW, no other Excel file is acting this way, nor any other Office document for that matter.
Personal experiences with excel, this file more than likely has been updated and modified so many times that is is essentially corrupt. Or it has an over inflated file size attributed to it. Example you have a single sheet file that is 7 MB in size which there is not possible way for it to really be that large. The only solution that I have had for these problems is to create a new xls document and copy over the information. Hope this helps.
And make sure you copy the values, not the formatting, when you do that. It makes a difference.
For some troubleshooting tips: you could try to uninstall the printer you installed to find out if that’s causing the problem.
You could open up the excel file in the run command window with an /a switch. That will open it up without running anything in the background and will give you an idea if there’s something gumming up the process there.
Is the excel file being accessed by any other network resources? If its not stored on your hard drive, bring it down from the server, sever any links and see if it still runs slowly.
Do you perhaps have Autocalculate turned on? That would explain the delay after each cell entry and the delay during save time. Try turning it off by setting it to Manual under Tools > Options > Calculation tab. I’ve seen this happen with spreadsheets that have a lot of formulaes or a considerable number of links to other spreadsheets, particularly if they are on the network.
You can force a sheet to calculate when you want (if Calculation is set to Manual) by pressing F9.
z28in813: I fixed a file similar to this (had gone up to 70MB) by opening it in OpenOffice.org and doing a Save As…The file went down to 7MB and Excel could open it again. I checked it and nothing was missing. Might be worth a try for this problem too if you have a nice fast connection to download OOo.
I did this, lot of work – and in the end it didn’t help much, but thanks for the tip, I have other files that are WAY bigger then is reasonable for the info they contain,
obviously they get that way from formatting zillions of unnecessary lines over time.
** ouisey ** wrote:
Check!
BINGO!
That was the problem, beats me why. I un-installed the new printer and put back the old one and “Volla”! the archive is acting like nothing happened, in fact since I cleaned every thing out of the start config except what was essential, defraged the disk ran adaware and even used a reg cleaner – the machine is running very fast now - I can not for the life of me understand how adding this printer could cause a conflict or any other problem, because they are both essentially the same printer (HP600 series) just that the 610 is a bit older.