# Solved: Excel 2007 slow to load, hangs



## becktholomew (Apr 24, 2009)

I'm trying to use Excel 2007 on a Toshiba laptop using Vista. I don't have my machine with me, so I can't tell you which Toshiba I have -- I got it Christmas 2007.

I use Excel for all my business bookkeeping and for some time, I've had trouble with it being very slow to open, and once it finally opens, individual worksheets are very slow to open. Once the worksheet opens, individual actions -- like adding a row -- are very slow. It can take me 15 minutes to complete that entire process -- open excel, open a worksheet, add enough new rows to actually work. By that time, I have a new client coming in and I have to turn everything off.

This happens whether I open Excel from the shortcut or from "All Programs." Sometimes it works faster, but mostly I have trouble. I've asked tech folks at my 2nd job, I've asked other techies -- no help.

I'm just short of pitching it all out for a Mac book. Help?


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## foxydude (Mar 25, 2009)

The most likely reason is disk or memory problems. Office 2007 uses about twice as much memory as 2003 as 2007 has a larger capacity for bigger spreadsheets. Microsoft have released an update - SP2 which has about 2000 updates. So downloading can take a long time and installation is even longer. For me it took 10 minutes to download and about 30 minutes to install. Can you go back to 2003 ? Have you thought about trying an alternative to Office ? OpenOffice(OOO) will open and save files in Microsoft format and in Office 2007 format and does not take so long to load. It might also be a way of testing your machine to see if OOO as slow or quicker http://www.openoffice.org/


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## becktholomew (Apr 24, 2009)

Thanks Foxydude ... I've found a sort-of solution and a work-around. Work-arounds annoy me ... but anyway ... uninstalled everything I stopped using and had forgotten about (blackberry, palm) and uninstalled google desktop. 

Google desktop apparently eats Excel alive. All that helped with opening Excel, but didn't address that particular worklbook. So ... I broke the workbook (which had several sheets ... expenses, packages, gift certificates, sales) into individual workbooks, made sure I didn't have blank columns or rows eating up space. and that helped.

I don't think I still have Office 2003 discs -- though maybe somewhere -- so in the meantime, I've just been using OfficeWorks' spreadsheet. I don't need fancy computations anyway -- mostly just adding.
Thanks


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