Thanks Charles.

I use the INDIRECT.EXT function, one of whose parameters allows for making
it non-volatile. I used this feature to significantly reduce the
re-calculation time.

"Charles Williams" wrote:

Excel recalculates both volatile cells and their dependents and changed
cells and their dependents.

Probably you have some volatile functions somewhere (OFFSET is volatile)


Charles
______________________
Decision Models
FastExcel 2.3 now available
Name Manager 4.0 now available
www.DecisionModels.com

"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?