In addition to Charles' comments, when a workbook reaches a sufficiently
high level of complexity Excel no longer tries to track the cell
dependencies that permit minimal recalc.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/243495/en-us

--
Jim
"hmm" wrote in message
...
|I have on my Excel 2000 workbook some complex calculations. According to
| Help, Excel "recalculates those cells that are dependent on other cells
that
| contain values that have changed." However, when I change cells on which
the
| complex calculations do not depend (or even if I simply apply the format
| paintbrush to keep grouped columns the same width) it takes half a minute,
| the same as when it recalculates the whole workbook.
|
| I have set the calculation to Automatic, so that the non-complex formulas
| get recalculated when I change their precedent cells. Based on the
| information in Help, however, I believe that Excel is supposed to
calculate
| dependents only of changed cells, even in Automatic.
|
| How can I prevent recalculation of cells whose precedents are unchanged?