Links causing slow loading of excel sheet.

[Logan_B]

Hello,

Excel previously worked well, however now it is running very slowly. Spreadsheets that used to load in a few seconds, now take 1-5 minutes and occasionally crash.

Defraging the hard drive and scan disk haven't really helped.

I believe it is caused by excel looking for linked worksheets, even though some of the spreadsheets are not related/linked to the open file.


Does excel sometimes become confused with links?
It is possible to remove or delete links?

Thanks,
Logan

 

[Richard Schollar]

Hi Logan

Welcome to the Board!

One thing is to ensure you have calculation switched to Manual before you open any workbooks (as the automatic calculation option can really slow things down) - before you open any workbooks, create a new workbook (File>New) and then go Tools>Options and on the Calculation tab make sure the Manual Calculation option is checked.

If you think it is external links causing a problem, then when you have one of these workbooks open, you can go Edit>Links to see what external references this workbook has. Depending on your version of Excel, you may be able to break any links which are not needed. Failing that, it will be a case of scouring the workbook and deleting any non-required links.

Frequently, links may reside in workbook names (Insert>Names>Define to list and review them). I have found that links that are not valid (eg contain #REF errors) can slow workbooks down, so it is worth checking for any such ones.

Hope you get some use out of the above.

Best regards

Richard