XL: Closing Sheet and/or Exiting from Excel Takes Excessively Long

ID: Q75334

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Excel for Windows, versions 5.0, 5.0c, 3.0, 4.0
Microsoft Excel for OS/2, version 3.0

SYMPTOMS

Sometimes it takes a considerable amount of time to close one or more sheets, or exit completely from Microsoft Excel.

CAUSE

Usually this is caused by an inefficient design of one or more sheets, or certain interactions between sheets (that is, macro sheets, worksheets, and even charts).

WORKAROUND

Following some basic rules may greatly improve this somewhat rare, sluggish behavior.

Listed below are some of the reasons why it may take very long to either close a sheet or exit from Microsoft Excel.

Cause 1: Calculation Is Slow

Possible Solutions

On the Options menu, click Calculation.

Select Manual and uncheck Recalculate Before Save.

If your spreadsheet contains data tables, select Automatic Except Tables as your calculation mode.

Optimize worksheet organization or redesign your model. (See the pages referenced below.)

Cause 2: A Large Number of Links Are Used

If a source (supporting) sheet is closed, all the formulas that contain links in the dependent sheet need to be updated. The more links there are, the longer this takes.

Example

Sometimes it seems practical to use a large number of VLOOKUP functions to create the effect of dynamic data extraction. Often this constitutes very large arrays, conserving memory, but not reducing calculation time. When closing the independent (source) document first, all VLOOKUP functions need to be modified to include the path of the source data. After the independent sheet is closed, the dependent sheet may then first recalculate before it closes too. This process can take up to 10 minutes, or even half an hour.

Possible Solutions

Close the dependent sheet first.

On the Options menu, click Calculation and cancel the selection of Save External Link Values.

Reduce the number of external links.

Cause 3: The Office Item Log File (Offitems.log) Is Damaged

For more information about this problem, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q180188 OFF97: Invalid Page Fault in OLE32.DLL Closing File

Additional query words: 3.0 4.0 5.0


Keywords          : kbdta 
Version           : WINDOWS:3.0,4.0,5.0,5.0c
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbprb

Last Reviewed: June 16, 1999