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35 Responses to “75 Excel Speeding up Tips Shared by YOU! [Speedy Spreadsheet Week]”

1. Jon says:

   March 27, 2012 at 2:35 pm

   I see most are saying that array formulas are bad. But I thought that when you use array formulas it grabs all the data at once and performs the calculations in one fell swoop. At least that is how the UDFs that I created work. When I did the time test it was much faster that way. Maybe I'll go back and check to make sure my work is right, but that's what I did.

   When I work with array formulas I get a full column of data then work on that column and return a full column of data all at once. Which has shown to be much faster than the alternative.

   Anyone have special insights on this?

   Reply
2. PremSivakanthan says:

   March 27, 2012 at 6:59 pm

   wow..! thats a pretty impressive list, some real gems in there. I read somewhere the other day that spreadsheet development should be 80% planning and 20% implementation - taking the time to think about layout, how you're going to calculate things and how to structure the data often results in a lot less headaches, and more time for deeper analysis...

   Reply
3. Prasad DN says:

   March 27, 2012 at 7:56 pm

   Hi Chandoo...

   Mixed feeling about this article, while I completely agree with you when you share everyone's points under their name giving credit to contributors, but at the same time I see alot of repeated tips and few those may not be applicable under all cases. (I may have sounded harsh). Some kind of sorting of tips were required than mere 3 categorization. (Tough ask, I know). Some really worthy and awesome tips get lost in occean.

   I would have been happy to read only non repititive tips and more like standard chandoo articles.

   Well, I have also got two tips (may get lost in the list above), which is not presented above:
   1. When using too many pivots - Disable data drilling option. This reduces file size, cache memory and speeds up file.
   2. If your macro has used too many files for gathering input, close the file and open. This is also release or kill unwanted space in memory and speeds up. Again this can be achieved by macro to close self file and reopen same file, using timer function.

   Please do not count me negative.

   Regards,
   Prasad DN

   Reply
4. Karan Kamdar says:

   March 27, 2012 at 9:24 pm

   Hey, one thing that really speeds up VBA processing of data is to extract ranges into arrays & then working on those arrays. Arrays are a lot faster than using cell offset or any other method for working with a database. After you are done you can also paste the value directly into the range with one single command. This will speed up the macros considerably.
   Here is a msdn article with examples in it:
   msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa139976(v=office.10).aspx

   Hope this helps

   Reply
5. John Hackwood says:

   March 27, 2012 at 11:28 pm

   oops, noticed a typo in the tip I posted:

   Re directly assigning values in VBA rather than copying & pasting should have read:

   Sheet2.Range( "B1:B200 ").Value= Sheet1.Range( "A1:A200 ").Value

   not
   Sheet2.Range( "B1:B200 ").Value= Sheet1.Range( "A1:A100 ").Value

   Reply
   • Kalpesh says:

     March 28, 2012 at 6:16 am

     Corrected with double quotes:

     Sheet2.Range("B1:B200").Value= Sheet1.Range("A1:A200").Value

     Reply
6. » Calculation Effeciency: Array Formulas Spreadsheet Budget and Consulting says:

   March 29, 2012 at 1:10 am

   [...] posts on speeding up Excel worksheets, one of the posts focuses on formulas and another he let the general readers make their suggestions. I made the suggestion that people use array formulas. But most of the other suggestions said not [...]

   Reply
7. Jon says:

   March 29, 2012 at 3:52 am

   OK, I tested it. My UDFs were faster as array functions (like a couple thousand times). But Excel's built in functions are faster when not doing arrays. Not sure this is the case for all situations.

   Reply
8. Mike Alexander says:

   April 3, 2012 at 9:52 pm

   I can't help but to speak up.

   Deleting a PivotTable will not speed up your workbook. It will only reduce the file size. There is zero memory processing for a pivot table if it just sits there.

   Instead of destroying the pivot table, why not remove the redundant raw data. That would equally reduce the file size of the workbook, while keeping the pivot table functionality.

   http://datapigtechnologies.com/blog/index.php/cut-the-size-of-your-pivot-table-workbooks-in-half/

   Reply
9. Ranjitkumar says:

   August 10, 2012 at 7:13 am

   Thanks a lot guys for your valuable tips !!

   It really worked for me

   Application.ScreenUpdating = False
   Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual

   ...
   ...
   ...
   Application.ScreenUpdating = True
   Application.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic 

   Reply
   • Jesenko says:

     September 2, 2012 at 6:53 pm

     I would add:

     Application.StatusBar = "Wait a second..."
     ............
     Application.StatusBar = False   

     Reply
10. Anthony says:

    August 28, 2012 at 8:14 pm

    Optimizing Speed using Pivot Tables:
     
    If you find that Pivot Tables are becoming sluggish becomes of the sheer volume of tables there is a way to increase performance.  By default (xls 2010) pivot tables are designed to autofit the data within the columns as well as preserving formatting.  I discovered that unchecking these two options alone will exponentially increase performance.
     
    Here's how to do it:
     
    Right click on your pivot table(s) --->choose 'Pivot Table Options' -->Layout & Format' Tab  --->uncheck two boxes at the bottom.  Done!
     
     

    Reply
11. JoeB says:

    September 10, 2012 at 7:28 pm

    here is my list:
    1.    Avoid Variants when possible
    2.    Use long instead of integer
    3.    Use double instead of single
    4.    Use booleans as much as possible
    5.    pull data into arrays, manipulate, then dump back to workbook
    6.    use .value2 instead of .value if you are looking at strings or numeric values
    7.    set object variables
    dim Wks as Excel.Worksheet
    set wks = thisworkbook.Sheets("Sheet1")
    8.    use with statements...
            with wks.cells(x,y)
                .value2 = "abcd"
                .interior.colorindex=4
                with .font
                    .bold=true
                    .size =20
                    .underline=xlunderlinestylesingle
            end with
    9.    use string version of functions (Left$() instead of Left())
    10.    Test for empty string variables with len() or lenb()...if lenb(String1)=0 then
    11.    Use the Mid$() function if it is possible instead of split()
    12.    use the join$() function instead of concatenating strings
    13.    AscW() to evaluate first characters
    14.    combine if statements and booleans together
                 boolean = (lenb(String1) = 0)
    16.    InStr(), InStrB(), InStrRev() are very fast, InStr() can be used to quickly return a substring occurrence of a string
    17.    DICTIONARIES!!!!!!!!!!!
    18.    FileSystemObject
    19.    My machine runs slightly faster when i fill in all the inputs of a function (instead of InStrB(String1, "abcd"), i use (InStrB(1,String1,"abcd",vbBinaryCompare)
    20. Short Circuit If statements: If x = 2 then if y >3 then if z = 5 then b=true or
    if x=2 then
        if y >3 then
            if z=5 then
                b=true
                c=true
            end if
        end if
    end if
    21.    use ElseIf
    22.    my testing indicates ElseIf is slightly faster than a Case Select
    23.    set strings to empty by: = vbnullstring
    24.    with application
                .screenupdating = false
                .displayalerts = false
                .enableevents = false
            end with
    25.    UserForms can be very beneficial
    26.    User-Defined Types are a very neat way to encapsulate data
    27.    User-Defined Functions are handy, but can increase run-time if called thousands of times
    28.    if using ElseIfs, nested And Ifs or Select Case statements, put the argument that will occur most frequently at the beginning
    29.    Looping is not the worst thing...just got to figure out how to do it the most efficiently
    30.    Use dynamic arrays instead of static arrays
    31.    if you can figure out Win32 APIs, then they are usually much faster than VBA functions

    Reply
12. Fredrik says:

    November 28, 2012 at 10:14 pm

    I worked on a massive spreadsheet and it had become very slow over time as I developed it. I tried stripping down more and more formulas by replacing with pasted values, removed all conditional formatting etc. In the end what finally did the trick was when I removed the last single SUMPRODUCT fomula. It changed the updating time after one change from 7-8 seconds to instantaneously. The SUMPRODUCT I had used the full columns, and if I put it to only look at rows 1-500 it was fine. 

    Reply
13. Best of Chandoo.org – 2012 | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel Online says:

    December 31, 2012 at 8:11 am

    [...] Speeding up Excel – 75 tips [Visitors: 36,157 ] Using Excel as your database [ 32,455 ] Comprehensive guide to VLOOKUP [ 23,745 ] 66 Dashboards visualizing Excel salary survey data [ 26,148 ] Interactive Sales chart in Excel [ 21,444 ] Compare 2 Excel sheets – howto? [ 21,820 ] Send mails using Excel VBA & Outlook [ 22,294 ] Customer Service Dashboard in Excel [ 18,136 ] Making your dashboards interactive [ 15,294 ] Extract numbers from text in Excel [ 18,490 ] [...]

    Reply
14. Vijaykumar Shetye says:

    December 31, 2012 at 7:18 pm

    TIPS FOR SPEEDING UP EXCEL
    
    (1) Instead of writing a lot of formulas to organise data, you can VLOOKUP() the data in a Pivot table, thereby combining the advantages of Pivot table and VOOKUP().
     
    (2) If you have a range named ‘TotalTaxForTheCurrentFinancialYear’, then it is not compulsory to use this name when making the worksheet. Naming the range as ‘Tax’ or simply ‘T’ will be sufficient. The formula =SUM(T) will be shorter and easier to use.
    After completing typing all the formulas, simply edit the name of the range from ‘T’ to ‘TotalTaxForTheCurrentFinancialYear’, in the name box. The formula =SUM(T) will automatically change to =SUM(TotalTaxForTheCurrentFinancialYear).

    Vijaykumar Shetye, India
     

    Reply
15. Jim Lyons says:

    January 1, 2013 at 12:06 am

    VBA
    I don't write many macros and like most of you when doing a recalculation it sometimes takes forever. 
    I have found that when I looked at my spreadsheet, I could determine which order of calcuations (by column) would produce the least number of iterations. So I wrote a macro to do my calculations on my terms.  I picked the order of the columns I wanted to calcuate and it sped up my recalc 5-10X.
    I did this so long ago, I believe I used "expression .Calculate".

    Reply
16. Vijaykumar Shetye says:

    January 1, 2013 at 6:36 pm

     
    TIPS TO SPEED UP EXCEL by Vijaykumar Shetye, India
    You can view all the formulas in the entire worksheet quickly by pressing [ctrl] and [~] keys simultaneously.
    To view results, press the key combination again.
     

    Reply
17. sajjad says:

    January 11, 2013 at 6:09 am

    i need help about excle lerning and reports making with dash bord i have no facility to join the on classes.
    sajjad.hussain165@gmail.com

    Reply
18. Ramesh Kolluru says:

    February 5, 2013 at 10:00 am

    Is there any command to get time with seconds
    Is there any way to create an excel file for specific time period, afterwards it will not open

    Reply
19. Need Some good Tips to build a big excel file so it'll RUN Faster. says:

    May 15, 2013 at 2:25 pm

    [...] are looking for , but give it a try : Optimize Slow VBA Code. Speed Up Efficient VBA Code/Macros 75 Excel Speeding up Tips - How to speed-up & optimize slow Excel workbooks? | Chandoo.org - Lea... [...]

    Reply
20. Reuben says:

    July 31, 2013 at 1:38 pm

    I've had to do a lot of mass calculations for reports etc. that involved repetitive identical, yet complex formulae, which took forever...
    I hit on a great time-saver: sort the spreadsheet data; if, for example, the same result was due to a lookup of Hotel Name (A column), Date (B column), and Room Type (F column), the formula (Z column) would be: "=IF(A2&B2&F2=A1&B1&F1,Z1,VLOOKUP(A2&B2&F2,LookUps!A:G,7,FALSE))".
    This meant that if the result is the same as the row above, just use the same answer, thus saving loads of time instead of VLOOKUPs. (This is a simplified example, the actual one had INDIRECT(ADDRESS...) in it, too!)

    Reply
21. Sam says:

    October 15, 2013 at 12:40 am

    Check files for invalid range names, invalid links and names that aren't needed any longer.

    Clearing out some 200 old references in a template made the file open go from 30 seconds to 2.

    Reply
22. MOhan says:

    December 20, 2013 at 4:54 pm

    You can improve the speed by stopping calculation during changing cell value and after that you can enable it. please follow the link.
    http://webtech-training.blogspot.in/2013/10/how-to-stop-heavy-formula-calculation.html

    Reply
23. Is There a Dinosaur Sitting on Your Excel File? | SukhbinderSingh.com says:

    February 12, 2014 at 9:53 am

    […] 75 Excel Speeding Tips Its a long List, many repeated but worth a visit. […]

    Reply
24. Excel Tip #35 – Suffering from Slow Excel Spreadsheets? Try these 10 tips to SPEED-UP your Excel says:

    May 2, 2014 at 10:02 am

    […] 75 Speed-up tips by Chandoo (smartly done by crowd sourcing) […]

    Reply
25. How to use 4% and stand out | JAMSO blogs says:

    March 25, 2015 at 6:16 am

    […] Are you opening slow excel files?  Use this reference to speed up your excel sheets […]

    Reply
26. Karl Mavadia says:

    September 6, 2016 at 8:13 pm

    If you want to highlight the content or result within a cell with colour, use content colour not cell fill colour. This make a large data sheet fast as full colour takes up more resource.

    Reply
27. GraH says:

    October 4, 2016 at 11:18 am

    There are already so many useful replies, so don't be mad at me if I repeat someone with the following hints.
    While using pivot tables:
    1. Link (raw) data from external files, rather then building pivots in the same workbook of the data. => Reduces file size.
    2. don't flag "keep source data" in pivot settings. => reduces cache.
    Downside is when you want to use slicers, you must allow refresh of the source data and thus people need access to that file.

    One extra when using tables above ranges: replace the table header references by cell references in heavy duty formulas. I'm not sure but it seems to be faster and lighter (in #MBs).

    Reply
28. reza says:

    May 10, 2017 at 8:30 pm

    hi
    iam student and need xloptimizer( no demo) for solving the mathematical model
    can you help me
    thanks alot

    Reply
    • Hui... says:

      May 11, 2017 at 1:35 am

      @Reza

      We cannot give away XLoptimizer

      Why not post a question in the Chandoo.org Forums
      http://forum.chandoo.org/

      Reply
29. himanshu parekh says:

    October 11, 2017 at 4:17 am

    Dear Sir,

    Thanks a lot for sharing tips & tricks of excel....

    I read it , understand it and then use it in job and that has helped me a lot....

    Thanks a lot...

    Himanshu.
    Mumbai, India.

    Reply
30. Steven Hawksworth says:

    July 8, 2020 at 9:53 am

    In VBA, send out values to the worksheet all together as an array then excel will only re-calculate once rather than each time a cell that is output.

    Reply
31. Andy Automation says:

    July 19, 2020 at 10:55 am

    to the guy who said avoid looping in VBA - easier said than done, it's one of the most powerful uses for VBA out there. I'd therefore recomend the half way house and break the loop as soon as you've got what you want, don't let it run until the end. Use While etc.

    What I would say on VBA in general is minimise sheet to code interations. Suck all your data into a VBA array THEN do the maths don't use cells themselves as stand alone visual variables.

    And to the lady who said it's faster offline - that's because Microsoft are constantly contacting their own website be it security verification and/or update checks

    Reply
32. BeeHouseWV says:

    November 8, 2023 at 6:55 pm

    Apply some logic to the order of criteria in sumifs / countifs formula

    order the most exclusive criteria first. Once one criteria fails the others do not execute.

    Bing AI, given the following query, confirms this: "excel countifs. if one criteria is likely to exclude most of the data range then should this criteria go first in the list to prevent frivilous executions".

    Reply

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