Run macro if computer is idle

http://www.excelforum.com/excel-prog...tain-time.html

I can think of a way to make this happen.

The query is probably taking a long time to run since it is a complex query running against a large database. Why not run the query in a separate workbook to get the results. After the query is done have it write a date stamp to a cell on another worksheet.

Now in the workbook you are working in, do a query against the workbook that runs the query for the date stamp. You can have this refresh every 5 minutes without it being a burden on your work. Use a change event (it should work for a data refresh) on the result and have it notify you when a change to the date stamp has happened. This means that the data has changed since the last time you looked at it.

Then you can refresh the query for the full data against the workbook. The data there is a "flat file" and should download quickly. You could also tie this in with the change event to run the query automatically.

Instead of keeping the workbook that queries the database open all the time, you could run it using the windows task manager. This way it won't be open all the time (only when running the query) and it will run in the background and in a separate instance of Excel so it won't interfere with any other Excel workbooks you have opened manually.

There are several ways to run a macro in another workbook using the task scheduler. The following article is one of them. The way it works is that you fill out the script with the path to the spreadsheet you want to run (target workbook), the name of the spreadsheet you want to run and the macro within that spreadsheet that you want to execute.

The script shows the path to itself which you can copy and paste into the windows task scheduler. So the task scheduler runs the script (which has an on open macro in it) which then runs the macro in the target workbook.

Additionally the script writes a status of the result of the run. To see it you can navigate to the script in Excel and open it while holding down the shift key. Holding the shift key will keep the script macro from running.

http://www.utteraccess.com/wiki/inde...a_Macro_to_Run