Excel sheet slow with a lot of formula

[madvogue29]

Hi all I have an excel sheet with 15-20 tabs and most sheets have 1000s of rows with formulas and it is starting to slow it down. is there anything that can be done to speed up the sheet. it is taking minutes to save and update. basically unworkable at this stage. I am focused on 3 tabs that are super slow.
thanks in advance!

 

[Joe4]

That is usually a sign that you are probably using the wrong tool for the job.
Most of time, in these kinds of situations, what people are actually working with are "relational databases" (a bunch of data that is all related/connected).

Though you can "brute force" using Excel as a relational databases, that is really not what it was designed for, and it is clunky and slow.

In these situations, it is much better to use a relational database program, like Microsoft Access or SQL.
If you absolutely must use Excel, then you may want to look at using "Power Query", which is a tool that allows you to do relational database-type operations more efficiently in Excel.
We have a forum for those questions here named "Power Tools".

 

[madvogue29]

thanks joe but the issue is the power query wont work for me. each sheet is like a custom dashbaord with multiple sets of formula calling from multiple sheets.

 

[Joe4]

thanks joe but the issue is the power query wont work for me. each sheet is like a custom dashbaord with multiple sets of formula calling from multiple sheets.

I re-iterate, sounds like a job for relational database program.
If it were me, I would probably use Microsoft Access.

Note that if you use something like SQL or even the free MySQL, you can still use Excel as your front-end.
I have never tried it myself (as I just use Access), but you can Google "using Excel as a front-end for SQL or MYSQL" to get more details on that.

 

[madvogue29]

will do thanks