When I scroll either vertically or horizontally in Excel 365 I experience noticeable and disruptive lag. This doesn't occur in a blank worksheet, but I've isolated it down to just adding even one comment in any cell in a blank worksheet will cause this. Through my googling I've noticed that others have this issue. At first I thought this was specific to my computer (Dell XPS 13 laptop with an i7 and 16GB so no slouch), but then I tested it on a desktop and have the same issue. Below are the details of my test:
Dell XPS 13 9370 with i7 and 16gb Ram and 4k screen with both Excel 2007 and Excel 365 installed on the same machine with Windows 10 Build 18362:
Created blank sheets in both Excel 2007 and Excel 365, and then with stopwatch on my phone clock app, starting holding down down arrow key and lifted exactly when stopwatch reads 5 seconds:
Blank sheet
Excel 365: 160 rows, row number change is NOT smooth (*see detail below)
Excel 2007: 160 rows, row number change is smooth
Blank sheet with one comment
Excel 365: 60 rows, row number change is NOT smooth
Excel 2007: 160 rows, row number change is smooth
*Regarding the number change not being smooth: what I mean by that is while in a blank sheet, Excel 365 will scroll about 160 cells in 5 seconds, but if you watch the left row numbers as you hold down the down arrow key, they don't display smoothly but will skip large amounts of numbers even though you end up in row 160 after depressing down arrow key at 5 second mark; Office 2007 doesn't do this, and instead properly displays the row numbers rapidly and steadily changing as you hold down the down arrow key
Disablling hardware acceleration (Options>Advanced) makes no difference to the above.
Hiding comments (Options>Advanced) makes no difference to the above.
Also changing Windows text scaling to 100% or 300% (recommended by windows setting) from 225% didn't make a difference.
I then thought maybe it's a resolution thing. Here's my test below with a low resolution:
After changing resolution from 3840x2160 to 1600x900 and doing 5 seconds of scrolling:
Blank sheet
Excel 365: 160 rows, row number change is smooth
Excel 2007: 160 rows, row number change is smooth
Blank sheet with 1 comment:
Excel 365: 160 rows, row number change IS NOT smooth
Excel 2007: 160 rows, row number change is smooth
So downgrading the resolution fixed the scrolling speed but the row number changes are still not smooth. And remember the above test case is a blank sheet with just one comment. So I wanted to test a more realistic harder case so opened a spreadsheet on which I do my taxes that has 4 tabs with a several hundred cells populated each. Here's that test:
Tax analysis sheet (contains lots of comments so good to test)
Excel 365: 115 rows, row number change IS NOT smooth
Excel 2007: 155 rows, row number change is smooth
So there is still a significant speed difference in a real world situation even with downgrading resolution. And even though lowering the resolution helps, that's not a realistic fix to change the resolution every time I want to use excel.
I thought it must be a video card issue related to this particular laptop as multiple other people have this issue per:
dell.com/community/XPS/Excel-sluggish-and-freezes-impossible-to-use/m-p/7286869
But then there's also this in which people on non Dell computers have the issue:
superuser.com/questions/1429975/excel-365-slow-scrolling-due-to-notes-and-comments
So just to be sure, I installed both Excel 365 and Excel 2007 on my Dell Desktop that I bought in 2013 but is still a very fast computer, certainly at least for Excel. See the test below:
Dell XPS 8500 i7-3770 16GB RAM, SSD HD, 4k screen running Windows 10 Pro Build 18632
On Dell XPS 8500 Desktop at 4k resolution:
Blank sheet
Excel 365: 160 rows, row number change is smooth
Excel 2007: 160 rows, row number change is smooth
Blank sheet with one comment
Excel 365: 80 rows, row number change is smooth
Excel 2007: 160 rows, row number change is smooth
So it looks like this issue isn't specific to the Dell XPS 13. I bought the above desktop in 2013 while my XPS 13 is from 2018. So something tells me this isn't just a Dell issue that's been around for 6 years. I think it's likely an issue with Excel 2016 itself. If someone has a non Dell computer with a 4k screen that can run the above test (literally just create the blank spreadsheet with and without a comment in the first cell, then hold down the down arrow key while you start and stop a stopwatch on your phone clock app), that would help isolate this problem. Please update this thread with what you find!
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