variable "speed" of excel operations

[Steve]

I hope someone can explain this to me.....
Why is it that Excel operations such as merge cell, or fill, etc.... takes
so long on one file, and then speeds like a demon on another file?
There's no rhyme/reason that I've been able to identify thus far.
I.e., one file that has lots of worksheets will work through the operations
really fast, and then another with only a couple of worksheets will move
along like a snail, as though it has 50 things it has to do before it gets to
what I've selected.
Then, the next one will be a lot of worksheets, and it moves really slow, to
the point where I can leave for 5 minutes, go walk around the floor I work
on, and get back and it's STILL working.
It doesn't matter if I've saved it between working or not. It doesn't matter
if I'm doing a macro that I've created or not.
My system is a P4, 3Ghz, with 1gb ram, and I'm running XP-Pro, SP3 so that's
not the issue. At least I hope not.
Oh, and yes, I'm using Office 2007, SP2.
This has gotten past ridiculous, so if someone can provide me with a
reasonable explanation it'd be really nice.

Thank you.

 

[Jim Thomlinson]

There is no one silver bullet answer. Check out this link for som clues on
what is going on under the covers...

http://www.decisionmodels.com/index.htm

 

[Steve]

Hi Jim,
Thanks for the response.
In reading some of this, I remember now having asked this question set
before.
I have in fact turned off journaling-- something that seemed cool when I
first saw it, but I realized at a certain point it was useless.
Have also cleaned out the tmp files. Will see how that works. I remember
having to do that weekly with Win95, and 98. Had all but forgotten about it
for XP.
I've book marked the link for future reading as well.
It's just really frustrating to have it be so inconsistent. I could more
easily understand if there was something such as large files were the only
ones that slowed way down, or if the data was really convoluted, etc....
But based on what I've identified so far-- after 4 years of daily working
with excel-- it's mostly having to do with selecting multiple cells, merging,
and setting fill color, alignment, etc..... on a single sheet. It doesn't
even matter if I only select one cell group-- single column, 4 rows-- and
then merge, it acts as though it's got a flu or cold of monumental
proportions, and can't get out of bed to even go to the bathroom, or grab a
glass of water.

Well, I closed the excel files, cleaned out the temp files, checked for more
temp files elsewhere, and cleaned them out. It's still running like the
snail.......
sigh......

 

[Jim Thomlinson]

Certain actions do take a long time to execute. Some formatting is
particularily bad. Instead of merging cells try

Format | Cells | Aligment -> Horizontal -> Center Across Selection

Looks like merged but actually is not. None of the downsides of a merged
cell either.