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,

We acknowledge the issues still being encountered and appreciate your feedback.

Extending our solution to disable the notification on first dismiss (click "X") for Cloud workbooks to local or network shared ones still isn’t there yet to work reliably when these workbooks are shared with others via email attachments, or downloaded locally, etc.

That said, in response to feedback from users of local or network shared workbooks, we have decided to disable the notification for local and network shared ones while we work on a reliable long-term solution. You should find the notification disabled starting in the Beta Channel version 2503, build 16.0.18604.20000  or later. Please give it a try and inform us if you find the notification remains enabled.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your continued feedback.

Thank you,
Prash

Answer 3

IT. HAS. BEEN. TWO. YEARS.

Two years where a feature that literally nobody asked for and nobody wanted destroyed hundreds of hours of work from your most loyal customers.

Yes, I know you have data, but you don't seem to know what it means. The reasons people optimise wipe sheets and don't fix them is because they don't know how or what happened. If I send a P&L worksheet to a department that is not tech savvy, I design it so all they have to do is fill in their numbers, and they get everything caluclated for them. But because they don't know better and the feature is super-opaque, they'll "optimize" it. And then, not wanting to admit they (actually you at Micrsoft) messed up, and not knowing how to fix it, they'll just use it as is, and send back some janky thing they made to try and hide their your mistake. Then I need to spend MY time to clean it all back up. That's why you have so many users who keep using the optimized broken workbooks.

If you'd y'know, ASKED users if this is a thing we'd want, explained what you were doing, intead of unilaterally rolling it out with no clue what the hell you were doing? We would have told you no.

But that's not what you do. You make decisions based on "data" with no freaking context. You think you're gods who know what users need. And finally, after TWO YEARS, you finally did what you should have done right away: disable the damn feature. Thank you.

We've given you ways to fix the tool.

1. Let the worksheet creator disable optimization for all users.
2. Have the Optimize feature TELL users exactly what it's going to change—with a clear warning it may have unintended consequences.
3. Have it actually check system performance. My workstation with 64GB of RAM and 16 threads? It's not going to have a problems with ANY sheet. There's never a reason to want to "optimize".

Guys. This isn't rocket science. Find out what your users ACTUALLY want before you change things. If you want a simpler app for casual users? Make one. You used to have MS Works. Do it again. But don't break OFFICE. We NEED IT. For WORK,

Kindly STOP BREAKING OUR TOOLS.

Answer 4

Spencer - BRAVO! You've said exactly what we've all thought and you said it perfectly! Thank you.

Answer 5

Mea I couldn't agree more

Microsoft just have not grasped the point that some users of a workbook are not authorised to alter it - just to use it as designed.