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

Thanx for reaching out folks! Sorry to hear that in your cases the notification isn't helping. Please correct me if I am wrong, but your cases in which these repeated pop-ups occur are as follows:

1. Workbooks that have been prepared with many empty formatted cells to be filled in gradually over time… in this case, the intentional presence of lots of formatted cells with no data, is triggering the built-in threshold (majority of cells in a workbook have such unused formatted cells comprising a minimum of many 10s of thousands of them) when the user does not need it to and so has to close out the notification on each load.
2. Workbooks that have been optimized however the notification still shows up on a subsequent open… in this case, the same user pattern (as #1) occurs repeatedly to close out the notification. That said, (different from #1) since the workbook was already optimized, then the notification shouldn't show for the optimized content, unless these formatted cells with no data got reintroduced OR there may be an underlying bug here… any chance you could please consider sharing your workbook with me Jamie_BDO?  You can obfuscate any proprietary / private info as well as privately share it by clicking the icon below .

In any case, as it stands there isn't a manual setting to turn it off yet, that said, we are assessing solutions to alleviate these repeated pop-ups in your cases. Btw, if you could please consider Sending a Frown from Excel for the Web, your feedback and its associated telemetry would also greatly help us in this effort. Your assistance and patience is deeply appreciated.

thanx,

Prash

Answer 3

Thanks Prash,

I think your analysis is quite correct.

I have tried to optimise the sheet based on advise of Excel, but they are really silly improvements of removing colouring of cells and some formatting issues. Really not big, data-intense formatting.

So, all in all, I really think it should be possible to eliminate this notification permanently. Because it is confusing for users, especially non-experienced users get the nerves because of this message.

I hope you can help out or escalate this issue

All the best,
Hanzie

(I could share anonymised the file with you, but don't know how I can easily DM you)

Answer 4

What if I don't want to optimize the performance, as HanziV said, my 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.

Answer 5

There is no option to disable this notice. You may send feedback to Microsoft.