Unfortunately, the larger an Excel spreadsheet gets, the slower the calculations will be.

Depending on the formulas, size of the workbook and the computer, the calculations may take up to 30 minutes.

In this article, we take a look at 17 methods to save time and speed up Excel.

That makes us come up with the matrix on the right hand side.

These steps are a little bit more complicated as most of them require changes to formulas or the workbook structure.

Concerning the last two methods (14 and 15): We recommend only doing them when all other ways are already applied.

How to check, how many cores are being used When calculating a workbook, in the right bottom corner the number of processors used will be listed, Calculating (only one processor) or Calculating (4 processors) e.g., see number 1 on the picture on the right hand side.

This can be internet browsers, music programs, other Microsoft Office programs.

You should also check, which programs are running in the background.

Some basic Microsoft Office programs will reduce the calculation time around -1.

The reasons are mainly that old add-ins and data connections might not work with 64bit.

But our test reveals, that you can save app.

Excel.

This can make your workbook quite slow, especially large workbooks and sophisticated formulas.

Now, your workbook will only be recalculated when you save it or you press F9.

We found out, that VLOOKUP and the INDEX-MATCH combination are much faster than SUMIFS.

So replacing SUMIFS by VLOOKUP or INDEX-MATCH (wherever possible) might reduce the calculation time by app.

The cell range within the formula is different or changes with each row, for instance SUM(A1:A3) (one part is fixed with -signs and one part is not).

Instead, try to apply formulas with always the same range (SUM(A1:A3)).

If you really cant avoid it, you should look for a workaround (for example the following method number 6).

For example, you got input data and you are doing some first modifications calculations with them.

Based on these calculations you are conducting your further analysis.

You can replace them with values (but should save the formula once somewhere).

You can save the formulas here and the data below doesnt contain any formulas but just values.

Therefore, copy the data (still with formulas) and paste special (Ctrl Alt v) them, selecting Values in the paste special window.

Speed Up Excel For Mac