How to stop excel from constantly spinning upunused external hard drive (and prevent the delaythat c

[cmi]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel Hi, I'm a longtime user with a new problem:

I have an external drive hooked up that is used for Time Machine backups and nothing else. The drive is in energy-saving "sleep" mode most of the day except for:

A: when awakened by time machine to perform a backup and
B: when awakened by excel during any number of operations (often just clicking on a cell in an open sheet).

So, throughout my day I have to watch the beachball spin while excel decides to spin up my sleeping external drive for no apparent reason. (That 15 seconds each time can be surprisingly aggravating while busy at work)

Anyone know how I could get excel to stop feeling the need to access that drive?

FWIW, this is a new macbook pro so the install is recent - i've never seen this behavior prior to getting this new machine (I get a new one about every 18 months, and as far as I know I use the same install procedure for office each time)

Thanks in advance!

 

[John McGhie]

Well, the "cause" is that "The Excel sheet you are using has a reference set
to something on an external location".

So whenever you touch that sheet, Excel will ask the OS for the external
drive. Chances are, it's a sheet from somewhere else that has a link set to
a spreadsheet on a network drive.

Excel can't tell, it asks the OS to find it. The OS doesn't have the
location either, so it spins up all attached drives to look for it, in case
it's on there.

The key is to go into Edit>Links and see what it is that is linked, and
break the link. It's obviously not being found or used, otherwise you would
see data changing, so it's safe enough to simply break the link.

Cheers

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel
Hi, I'm a longtime user with a new problem:

I have an external drive hooked up that is used for Time Machine backups and
nothing else. The drive is in energy-saving "sleep" mode most of the day
except for:

A: when awakened by time machine to perform a backup and
B: when awakened by excel during any number of operations (often just clicking
on a cell in an open sheet).

So, throughout my day I have to watch the beachball spin while excel decides
to spin up my sleeping external drive for no apparent reason. (That 15
seconds each time can be surprisingly aggravating while busy at work)

Anyone know how I could get excel to stop feeling the need to access that
drive?

FWIW, this is a new macbook pro so the install is recent - i've never seen
this behavior prior to getting this new machine (I get a new one about every
18 months, and as far as I know I use the same install procedure for office
each time)

Thanks in advance!

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[cmi]

Hi John,

Your suggestion is a good one and I wish that were enough to solve it - the problem is Excel (as well as Word, now that I look into it) wake the hard drive for almost ANY action. Maybe clicking an empty cell in an open spreadsheet, while that extrenal drive is asleep was a bad example, because doing a command-o (open) or a save-as, will also wake that external drive. Half of the time on this laptop, I'm not hooked up to the backup drive (I only hook it up when "docked" at my desk at home, but I use this machine at work during the day) - and when I'm not hooked up to the drive everything is hassle-free, but as soon as I'm connected to the sleeping drive, word 2008 and excel 2008 continually wake the drive, and none of my other daily-use apps (entourage 2008, photoshop, illustrator, cyberduck) do so (nor do any of apple's bundled apps).

Any other ideas, anyone? Tempted to wipe office 2008 and try a reinstall, with the external drive disconnected, so see if that helps...

Thanks!