Excel 97 stuck in calculation loop - maximum cells problem?
 

I have a problem with excel 97 entering some sort of semi-infinite
calculation loop. I have a workbook roughly 6.5 MB with about 25
sheets. It pulls in real-time data which causes it to recalculate
whenever this source data changes. My problem is that every now and
then (generally after a few hours of use and normally precipitated by
switching from another program back to excel using ATL+TAB)) it starts
a calculation loop and the status bar says "Calculating cells:
4123456789" and counts down. Of course once it has entered this
calculation process I can't interrupt it and I have to kill the
session. Maybe it's trying to calculate every cell in the workbook,
but this doesn't quite add up - the number of cells it's trying to
calculate is about 4 billion and my workbook has 25x256x65536 = c400
million cells, so that's not quite it. I've heard that excel 97 has a
maximum number of cells that it can deal with - maybe I've exceeded
this. I do experience the problem "No more custom number formats can
be added" sometimes when formatting cells, but I know that there is an
explicit limit of 4000 for this, and I could have exceeded that.
Anybody else come across the inescapable calculation loop? Any hints
gratefully received.

Excel 97 stuck in calculation loop - maximum cells problem?
 

I have had this kind of problem when a calculation gets interrupted too many
times.

Charles
______________________
Decision Models
The Excel Calculation Site.
www.DecisionModels.com

"dl" wrote in message
om...
I have a problem with excel 97 entering some sort of semi-infinite
calculation loop. I have a workbook roughly 6.5 MB with about 25
sheets. It pulls in real-time data which causes it to recalculate
whenever this source data changes. My problem is that every now and
then (generally after a few hours of use and normally precipitated by
switching from another program back to excel using ATL+TAB)) it starts
a calculation loop and the status bar says "Calculating cells:
4123456789" and counts down. Of course once it has entered this
calculation process I can't interrupt it and I have to kill the
session. Maybe it's trying to calculate every cell in the workbook,
but this doesn't quite add up - the number of cells it's trying to
calculate is about 4 billion and my workbook has 25x256x65536 = c400
million cells, so that's not quite it. I've heard that excel 97 has a
maximum number of cells that it can deal with - maybe I've exceeded
this. I do experience the problem "No more custom number formats can
be added" sometimes when formatting cells, but I know that there is an
explicit limit of 4000 for this, and I could have exceeded that.
Anybody else come across the inescapable calculation loop? Any hints
gratefully received.