Issue with Excel showing in a cell that it is calculating

Question

We have a couple of users that have starting experiencing cell calculation issues. They may make a could of changes to some numbers and the cell that has the formula of the column that we updated sits and states that it is calculating. This do not happen every time changes are made so it has been hard to track the issue. The spreadsheet is set to automatically calculate formulas. In the screen shot below the cells that look to be back is actually the word calculating. To resolve the issue the users will have to click on the cell and hit enter.

Answer 1

Excel tries to be smart and recalculate only the cells that might be impacted when you change a cell's value. However as the spreadsheet gets larger then this can become slower if you have lots of related calculations. At this point I'm wondering if you are calculating something that is causing something else to recalculate which triggers an infinite loop in some cases. You should be able to replicate the issue if you modify the same cell over and over again.

I would start by looking at any macros or VBA code that might be associated with the spreadsheet to see if any of them are getting in the way. Then I'd look at the formula that is freezing. Try a simpler formula temporarily and see if the problem goes away. If it does then start taking apart the formula and ensure that anything it depends on doesn't change a value that might eventually cause a circular dependency on the problematic cell's value.

Answer 2

Thanks for the response. The ironic part is once he hits enter on the cell it puts in the value from the formula. If he updates the same cells a second time there isn't any issues.