Excel Not Responding

[jalindy]

For the last couple months or so my users have been complaining about Excel not responding (See attachment) when they click into a cell from other apps.

It seems to be intermittent and freezes up the application that lasts less than a minute. They then can continue working on it again.

Not sure if its related to some MS updates that caused this problem or not.

Wondering if there are any other Excel users experiencing the same thing in their environment & possible solutions.

Thx

[Zer0Cool]

There are literally a million reasons this could happen.

To narrow down the cause for you (or your co-workers) there are a couple things to check:

• Does it happen to everyone, or only some people?
• Does it happen in any file or only certain ones?
• Is the issue repeatable or random (IE: is there x action that can be taken to replicate the problem or does it happen with no identifiable cause)?
• Does everyone get the same symptoms
• Is everyone using the exact same version of Excel (by comparing full version number, aka build number)? If not is there a pattern with the build numbers and issues (IE: everyone older than x build number has the issue)
• Is everyone on the exact same version of the OS (presumably Windows, according to build number...to get this from start just type 'winver' without quotes and hit enter)
• Does it happen in safe mode?

Those are just some preliminary questions to ask in troubleshooting this. Some explanations:

If it doesnt happen to everyone, then 2 things are possible. 1) Those people are doing something to cause the issue, 2) There are differences on their machines causing the issue.

If it happens on any file, then its likely not the file or its contents that are a problem (could be a template or something external to the files). Otherwise there is something in particular files causing the problem. This could be any number of things and different for each file having issues.

If its repeatable, then its easy to test resolutions. If I can cause the problem by doing copy/paste on cell A1 every time...and I try something to fix the issue all I need to do is try the same process to ensure it worked. If its random this is harder to test and generally requires trial/error and waiting between issues.

If certain people get different symptoms then its possible its more than 1 issue or that differences in software/environment (OS, 3rd party addins, other software) are the culprit. Sometimes 1 machine exhibiting symptoms may give more information or clearer errors than another.

If people are not in the same version OS or Excel its possible the problem is inherent to a specific piece of software or a specific combination.

If it doesnt happen in safe mode its an addin or template causing the problem more than likely. If it worked in safe mode start normally and disable all add-ins (and restart Excel). If the issue is gone activate one by one (restarting Excel each time) until the problem comes back, then you have found the culprit. It may not be needed and can be disabled/uninstalled or it may require an update.

Hope this helps you troubleshoot it. This is just the tip of the iceberg, there are a mind boggling number of possible reasons for this happening.