For lots of information about Excel's calculation speed and how to improve that, visit Charles Williams' site:

www.decisionmodels.com

--
Kind regards,

Niek Otten
Microsoft MVP - Excel

"JCWeaver in Raleigh" <JCWeaver in wrote in message
...
|I have a couple of MS Excel 2003 files consisting of multiple worksheets that
| are heavily formulated. I'm running into some issues with Excel just hanging
| up when it's calculating.
|
| For instance, when re-calculation is occurring, the "Calculating Cells: XX%"
| is visible in the lower left corner of the window. Sometimes the XX values
| will slowly reach 100, indicating completion of the calculation cycle. But
| more and more, it's not completing and just hangs (for example, reaching
| 25%). I open up the Task Manager window and it will say the Excel is "Not
| Responding".
|
|
| Specific questions...
| (1) How can I troubleshoot this?
| (2) Is there way to summarize the number of formulas and compare with
| thresholds above which performance problems may arise?
| (3) Certain types of formulas that are definite troublemakers?
|
| The most common formula I'm using has worksheets looking up values from
| other worksheets (see example below). I will say there's a quite a number of
| these formulas in my file doing a lot of cross referencing among worksheets.
| But how can one know when you've gotten too large or "too many somethings" in
| a given file.
|
| =IF(COUNTIF('Table 1 & 2 combined DBF'!$G$2:$G$394,$H7) 0, OFFSET('Table 1
| & 2 combined DBF'!$G$2,MATCH($H7,'Table 1 & 2 combined DBF'!$G$2:$G$394) - 1,
| 8), "")
|
| This formula looks to see if a station number exists in a range within
| another worksheet...if so, then find the row number, then move 8 columns over
| to the corresponding value or site attribute.
|
| I need some help here learning what or how I can troubleshoot these
| situations. I would like to avoid splitting the Excel file into smaller
| portions, because I'm not certain that's the sole problem.
|
| This is becoming a real matter of frustration here...any guidance
| appreciated...thanks.
|
| JCWeaver
|