Excel Calculating Forever

Question

I am a business owner running the Office 365 subscription and as a back solution, Excel 2010, both 64 bit.  I am working a single sheet file with less than 80,000 rows and 20 columns of data.  There is only one calculating column (Qty x unit cost).  There are no named ranges, no print ranges and no functions, no conditional formatting.  I regularly clear formatting and just apply a date format as necessary to work with the data.  {Ctrl][End] indicates that the end of the data is exactly where it should be. It is not a table as I cannot risk any filling or weird table actions.  Simply rows and columns of filtered data.   I have separate files that run a batch of SUMIFS.  Only one of these files are open at time.  I am attempting to translate QuickBooks data into a NAV format.  The database file has run OK for the past several months.  On Friday, I made the mistake of creating a print range on a filtered set of data, and failing to delete the print range as soon as I created a PDF. 

While the print range has since been removed,  the file has not recovered to be able to actually use it.  Hit a keystroke, wait 10 minutes or more.  I did experience a similar problem several months ago.  I have goggled every combination of related issues I can think of., and even called Microsoft support.  That was not helpful.  It's like I am the only one the planet experiencing issues. 

I have turned off macros, auto-fill, and automations.  It is now set to manual calculation.  Still, every action I take starts a 20-minute calculation cycle.  Bottom right of screen claims it is calculating anyway.  Insert a row: 20 minutes.  Resource monitor indicates both the disk and network usage spiking during this extremely long wait time.  I am running Windows 7 Ultimate, on a Intel Xeon (R) CPU v2 @ 2.6 GHz (2 processors) with 32 GB RAM.  Today  I moved the files to a fresh, out of the box USB 3.0 external hard drive.  External because all of my internal drives are SSD.  I believe I solved the problem several months ago by getting them off the SSD drive.  Today, I also followed the MACRO https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff700515(v=office.14).aspx and it returned a value of 0 seconds for full calculation when actual grey screen time was closer to 12 minutes. I do not believe Excel is actually calculating despite its claims.  I believe it is attempting some unauthorized cloud activity although I have never directed it to do so.  Perhaps trying to verify the subscription on every keystroke?  I know that sounds ridiculous but then the software is acting ridiculous.  I did disconnect from the Internet and experience moderate improvement.  Unfortunately, the data file I am modeling requires that I be connected remotely to the QuickBooks file accomplish the work.  I have range valued the single calculating columns and still no improvement.  Excel has nothing to calculate so its doing something else.  What on earth is it doing?  Better yet, what can I do to get back to work?  There are deadlines.  If I could get more than 5 minutes of work in an hour, I could've made the deadlines.  I just changed a filter, its been 5 minutes from 9:14 to 9:19 and its at 41% done "calculating."   Recall its set to Manual Only Calculation and no, I asked it to filter, not calculate.  This is defeating the purpose of a using a computer for work. 9 minutes and 70% complete.  Help please!

Answer 1

Does using a local printer driver make a difference?

Answer 2

The file has no page breaks. The view does have freeze panes. I cannot imagine working with the data without seeing the header row. Yes, I tried Safe Mode. I even tried the Excel Binary Workbook although both were abandoned as no help. I have since converted the data to an official "data table" and sent the original PC back for re-formatting. I am now on a borrowed PC with 1/2 the RAM at 16GB and able to work with about 3-minute saves. I suspect that this is a DOMAIN or PROFILE issue. The borrowed PC is on the DOMAIN whereas the original was not. We are a full Microsoft environment with SharePoint 2013 and three servers running Small Business Server, a s well as the Office 365. I feel this suspicion is supported in that I am frequently asked for network name and password to open locally saved/generated files that have never been on the network. I work remotely.

Answer 3

Hi

Are you using the " Normal View" ? Keeping the view to pagebreak/pagelayout forces Excel to calculate the page break position each time, thus slowing down.

HTH

Regards

JY

Answer 4

This sounds horrendous.

Have you tried launching Excel in safe mode (hold down Ctrl while launching Excel) to see if the problem goes away?  If it does then it's some add-in or startup program getting involved and you need to disable/remove the offender.

I assume it's not a Shared workbook? - they can have their own problems.

What is your default printer driver, and where is the printer (local or network)? 

Does changing it to a local driver such as the Microsoft Document Image Writer change the behaviour?

Good luck