Sheet randomly turns black

**CC64** · 11-10-2012, 11:09 PM

Hi,

I have a sheet which is drawing data from two external sources. One set of data is refreshed at 2 seconds while the other is 200 milliseconds.

The problem I have is the sheets cells will randomly turn black. Sometimes it will only be a few rows and others it will be the entire sheet. Clicking on a cell will often make the problem worse. To correct the problem I will often have to close the sheet and re open.

Initially this was only happening once every so often but now it will happen every 10 minutes or so.

Can anyone shed any light on what may be triggering this random formatting?

Regards,

Simon

**jimmalk** · 11-10-2012, 11:25 PM

Hi. I dont know definitively, but it seems maybe a memory issue between windows and excel. Could be you're over-reaching your computer resources. Solution?? Maybe limit your concurrent calculations and screen re-draws?

**dogberry** · 11-11-2012, 04:21 AM

Hi

Open your task manager to see what is using the most resources on your pc and perhaps give the main culprit a lower priority. Excel also uses your printer driver to draw the screen so install a laser printer driver which is must faster.

Hope it helps

Chris

**abousetta** · 11-11-2012, 04:25 AM

Have you tried turning screenupdating off and on again using vba?

**CC64** · 11-11-2012, 05:29 AM

I have a task specific bare bones XP system.

It's a Betfair application that links to a spreadsheet which in turn I have linked to another commercially provided odds scraping sheet.

It's a little buggy but has been working mostly fine for a long period of time.

My CPU usage runs between 60-70%.

Just running the odds scraping sheet on it's own with the 2 seconds refresh is stable. When I link the other sheet is when it seems to have issues.

How would screen updating help?

I forgot to mention the cells blink on/off with the refresh.

Cheers

**abousetta** · 11-11-2012, 09:01 AM

I am assuming that you are running these 'scraping' activities via vba. You might (should) turn off some of Excel's functionality while updating and then turn them back on again at the end. Have a look here at the description.
abousetta