How to stop Excel from automatically checking Workbook performance?

Question

Performance check??

The Excel sheet is the way I want it to look and don't want to change it for better performance. I just want Excel to stop prompting me.

Every time I open an Excel sheet, it wants me to do a performance check because of:

"Excess formatting and unneeded metadata cause large, slow workbooks. Check for improvements to performance"

So I find myself X-clicking away this message every time. Because there is no 'excess' of formatting. The Excel sheet simply is a nicely layouted workbook and we want it to be looking this way. We don't need Excel trying to outsmart us and giving this suggestion every time you open the workbook to remove information.

It is only very confusing for not-very-experienced users who also make use of my Excel sheet.

How and where can I set Excel in a way that is stops asking this unwanted question?

• The question mostly pops-up in the Web version of Office 365.
• I tried unchecking boxes in the performance check tool, in the desktop version, but to no result.

Would be lovely if someone has a workaround or knows which box needs to be un-checked.

And it would be awesome if a MS engineer helps giving priority to this problem, so that it can be switched of universally.

Answer 1

This thread shows that there are a significant number of people complaining about this. Unfortunately, this is only a user forum, we understand your problem, but we cannot do anything to fix it. Only the Excel developers can do this if they are instructed to do so.

As previously stated, this is simply a statistical problem, Microsoft must first recognize that this is a problem. Unfortunately, this is not so easy considering that more than 200,000 people work at Microsoft.

There is a feedback portal where you can cast your vote. There is already a feed on this topic, unfortunately with very few votes. I'm sure if we get as many votes as this post has been viewed, then Microsoft will react.

Anyone reading this, please follow these steps:

Click on this link:
https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/89bb523d-b197-ef11-95f6-0022484d7a88

1. Sign in
2. Click the Vote button

@HanzieV:

If you mark this reply as answer, it will be the first to appear when someone views this thread. I hope we can encourage as many people as possible to draw Microsoft's attention to this problem. Unfortunately, this is all we can do for you.

Andreas.

Answer 2

Dear all,

Apologies for the delay in rolling out the setting. We are working hard to release it soon and will keep you posted.

We acknowledge issues you are encountering. Additionally, we want to provide some context regarding the broader audience experiencing performance pain due to file bloat from excessive formatted cells with no data. There are primarily two use cases impacted,

1. Unintentional excessive formatted cells with no data: These accumulate over time in customer workbooks, often appearing indistinguishable from blank cells, leading users to be unaware of the need for removal.
2. Intentional excessive formatted cells with no data: These are typically included by the workbook author/designer from the start for aesthetic reasons or usability reasons or "...the way I want it to look and don't want to change it…" or "…designed for ease of use and visibility for the end use...", etc.

Our data reveals that with our notification trigger with its high threshold of more than tens of thousands of cells and over 50% excessively formatted cells with no data, the majority of users who optimized away these cells experienced noticeable performance improvements, even when simply opening their workbooks. And they continued to keep these optimizations persisted in subsequent user sessions too.

And so, we believe most users suffer from performance pain due to Unintentional excessive formatted cells with no data and would benefit from the notification to enhance their productivity. At the same time, we agree that users with Intentional excessive formatted cells with no data need control over the notification with a setting, and we are actively working on releasing this setting soon. We plan to monitor the setting’s usage to determine if future adjustments are needed as well.

We apologize again for the delay. And your feedback and patience are greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Prash

Answer 3

Thank you for the update. Looking forward to this setting.

Answer 4

It occurred to me that there have been times, when making a spreadsheet easier on the eyes, that I had clicked the 'Select All' cell (adjacent to cell A1) and selected a sheet coloring less harsh than the default white.

Depending on what the actual default sheet size is (I have no idea) this would likely create a significant of "excessive formatted cells" when I may ultimately only use a few hundred on that sheet. I personally don't like the term "excessive formatted cells" as in the context of my use they are not excessive.

With this admission, I do not recall any situation where there was any latency in opening up a sheet.

Another reason that I have felt that initially formatting a sheet in this manner, is that when I drag a cell to another location, it does not leave an uncolored hole when then needs to then be manually formatted to match the sheet color. This is a big deal in my workflow.

I haven't done any research into this, but is there a setting to select a default sheet size? If there was a setting, such as 50 rows + 25 columns, in many case that would reduce the number of excess cells colored in my Select All action while still covering the visual area of the spreadsheet. A couple of other larger selections would be useful larger jobs. I suspect that there may have been an additional unmentioned agenda behind this irritating feature related to someone possibly getting a bonus for coming up with an idea to reduce server storage space by reducing the size of potentially billions of spreadsheets stored in the cloud.

Answer 5

Simple question... How do you turn it OFF?