Excel Not Responding

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 5, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021


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Excel is frequently giving a "not responding" message when Brian is processing any of several workbooks. He wonders about the best way to diagnose and correct such a problem.

There are a number of things that you could check, but rather than reinvent the wheel here, I'll simply provide some pointers to helpful information. The best place to check may actually be the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/2758592

The article focuses primarily on elements external to what is in your workbook, each of which can affect how Excel works with your data.

Of course, the problem may be related to something else entirely. If the "not responding" message comes up when you are running a macro, it could be because of the macro itself. If that is the case, you'll want to dust off your debugging skills and figure out if you have a logic error in the macro that is causing it to go into an infinite loop. (What is an infinite loop? A series of steps repeated forever because the conditions that would stop the repetition naturally are never encountered.) If that is the case, you'll need to change the macro to make sure the infinite loop condition doesn't occur.

Of course, it could be that your macro is working as hard as it can and it just takes a long, long time. In cases like this, Excel seems to "turn off" foreground processing (what you see in the workbook) until the macro running in the background is finished.

One way to moderate this a bit is to place a DoEvents command in your macro code. This causes VBA to take a breath and execute any "events" that have built up while it was so busy running code that it ignored everything else. In other words, it causes VBA to allow Excel to "respond," so the "not responding" message doesn't appear.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (13435) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Excel in Microsoft 365, and 2021.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is 2 + 8?

2022-11-05 06:31:16

Tim Easter

I had a case this week of any spreadsheet that refreshes automatically on opening through Power Query and Power Pivot hanging. This behavior is only happening on my machine (aren't I the fortunate one). It seems that Power Query does its job okay, but it hangs while updating Power Pivot. Repairing the program doesn't affect it. A reinstall last week solved it for a day or two. Anyone come across this before? So far Google hasn't found me any answers. :( Tim


2022-11-05 05:54:35

Malcolm Lloyd

Think you should also be aware that there can be a problem with Microsoft Excel (2021) when using a 4k monitor. Even with a simple workbook (no macros) system will sometimes suddenly freeze requiring an exit of Excel and in some cases a reboot. All system RAM is taken up and not released. This does not occur when using a lower grade monitor. Microsoft is aware of problem but no fix yet issued.


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