I have databases that normally have approximately 30 columns and 40,000 rows
of data, but sometimes go up to about 90,000 rows. It's all plain data, no
formulas, no cells linked to this data (except a pivot table in another tab,
that is not set to automatically update).

When I have a monthly update, I delete the previous data and then paste in
the new data. Sometimes, with no apparent pattern, EXCEL hangs when I try to
delete the data. I do this by selecting all the data and hitting the delete
key. I don't want to delete rows or columns because I don't want to mess up
the pivot table settings, which I use to analyze the data each month.

Today, I timed 7 minutes waiting for the screen to refresh and finally used
Task Manager to close EXCEL (not responding). After multiple tries, I was
finally able to delete the old data, 5,000 - 10,000 rows at a time. Each
delete took a long time. I even tried pasting a block of blank cells over the
data - no improvement.

I even rebooted and tried with only EXCEL running. No change. Last month it
worked fine. Since then I had installed WINDOWS Search and Google gadgets. I
uninstalled WINDOWS Search and turned off Google gadgets and rebooted. No
improvement.

Any ideas why this is happening and what i can do?