Excel formulas are slow to update
 

If I enter new information onto a worksheet, the item is not included in the
totals box unless I leave the worksheet and then come back to it. I've tried
resetting the Tools - Options - Calculations to automatic - but it doesn't
help

sounds like you have a lot of items being recalculated each time.
Depending on what exactly is being recalculated, there are various things
you can do.
If this sheet is mostly data and most of the calculations are on other
sheets. you can make calculation be manual and set up a macro to calculate
just this sheet when anything is changed on this sheet.

You might break up the workbook into several smaller workbooks so that a
smaller section is being recalculated each time.
I have known people that the simplest thing to speed up calcs was to add
memory to the computer.
There also might be areas where you needed calculations to generate
something, but the answer is there now so that the calcs do not need to be
done again.
A lot of files work much better with some juditious copy and paste special
values.

"Jools" wrote:

If I enter new information onto a worksheet, the item is not included in the
totals box unless I leave the worksheet and then come back to it. I've tried
resetting the Tools - Options - Calculations to automatic - but it doesn't
help

Jools wrote:
If I enter new information onto a worksheet, the item is not included in the
totals box unless I leave the worksheet and then come back to it. I've tried
resetting the Tools - Options - Calculations to automatic - but it doesn't
help

You are probably experiencing long re-calculation times.

A couple of speed-up suggestions

[1] Try to replace the formulas using OFFSET and INDIRECT with ones that
do not invoke these and other volatile functions.

[2] Try to restrict the array formulas, inclusing the formulas with
SumProduct to relevant subranges or replace them with formulas which
invoke SumIf (or CountIf).

[3] Try to replace lookup formulas with the match-type = 0 (or FALSE)
with lookup formulas with the match-type = 1.

See http://www.decisionmodels.com for more tips.