Excel sluggish and freezes, impossible to use

Thank you for your message. Does the system freeze only when using the MS office application?

Did this happen out of the box or after any Windows update?

Does every application under MS office have this issue or is it only with Excel?

For my reference, please click on the message tab next to your avatar– click “New Message” & search for my Dell username (Sreejith R) & send a private message with the service tag, registered name & email address.         

I have also responded to your post here.

Well that didnt age well, same issue now even with charger plugged in.

There is a chance i might have solved it..

Under display settings, i changed 'Change the size of text, apps and other items' from 125% to 100%, and now i can scroll in the excel file without crashing.

Try and see if it works for you guys?

Edit: started crashing again.......

I have this same issue with my Dell XPS 13 9370 with i7 and 16gb Ram and 4k screen.  I think it's video card or driver and resolution related as i have both Excel 2007 and Excel 365 installed on this machine with Windows 10.  

Confirmed on Dell XPS 13 by creating blank sheets in Excel 2007 and Excel 365
-In both, if you hold down arrow key for 5 seconds in blank sheet, you scroll about 160 rows
-If you add just one comment to any cell, you only scroll about 50 to 80 cells in Excel 365 while you still scroll 160 cells in Excel 2007
-Disablling hardware acceleration (Options>Advanced) makes no difference
-Hiding comments (Options>Advanced) makes no difference
-Another wrinkle: while in a blank sheet, Excel 365 will scroll about 160 cells in 5 seconds, but if you watch the left row numbers as you hold down the down arrow key, they don't display smoothly but will skip large amounts of numbers even though you end up in row 160 after depressing down arrow key at 5 second mark; Office 2007 doesn't do this, and instead properly displays the row numbers changing as you hold down the down arrow key.

Scrolling is a bit better with Excel 365 if you reduce screen resolution to 1920x1080.  But we shouldn't have to do that!

How is one of the most popular laptops incompatible with the world's most popular spreadsheet application? I've had this issue for months so looks like a fix isn't imminent.

Duplicate

I made the post just before this one and have an important update.  So I did the above tests on my Dell XPS 8500 server and encountered the same issue:

Dell XPS 8500 i7-3770 16GB RAM, SSD HD, 4k screen running Windows 10 Pro Build 18632

On Dell XPS 8500 Desktop holding down down arrow for 5 seconds:
Blank sheet
Excel 365: 160 rows, row number change is smooth
Excel 2007: 160 rows, row number change is smooth

Blank sheet with one comment
Excel 365: 80 rows, row number change is smooth
Excel 2007: 160 rows, row number change is smooth

So it looks like this issue isn't specific to the Dell XPS 13.  I bought the above desktop in 2013 while my XPS 13 is from 2018.  So something tells me this isn't just a Dell issue that's been around for 6 years.  I think it's likely an issue with Excel 2016 itself and maybe Dell and non Dell computers.  If someone has a non Dell computer that can run the above test (literally just create the blank spreadsheet with and without a comment in the first cell, then hold down the down arrow key while you start and stop a stopwatch on your phone clock app), that would help isolate this problem.  Please update this thread with what you find!  

Anybody check to see if Filter Keys (Settings>Keyboard) is enabled in Windows? If it's enabled, try disabling it.

Anybody try running Excel in Compatibility Mode for Win 7? Right-click the Excel short-cut and select Properties. Click Compatibility tab, check the box and select Win 7. Save the change and see if that helps...

Hi, I have the same issues right now, with my XPS 15 7590

the excel i use are very sluggish, and i have try to Dissable hardware graphic acceleration but it's still the same

any idea how to make this things work smoother? thank you

May I know if you have tried any troubleshooting steps to haver the issues resolved? Have you tried to uninstall and reinstalling the application? Please share your system service tag details along with the registered name so that we can assist you further. 

So I've been struggling with this for ages and just worked out a solution, involving changing the high DPI scaling settings for excel. Locate excel.exe on the hard drive, right click -> properties -> compatibility -> change high DPI settings -> high DPI scaling override. Check the box here, and select the Override performed by System option. 

I ALSO had to disable hardware graphics acceleration within the excel app (file -> options -> advanced -> disable hardware graphics acceleration).

Doing either one of the above on its own did not solve the problem. 

Result: my excel now scrolls smoothly and horrific lags have gone. On the downside, the screen is now blurry within the excel app. It seems that the pc / excel cannot cope with rendering for the high DPI screen properly and scrolling fast at the same time. Incredibly disappointing. For me the productivity gains are worth it so will be sticking with the blurry screen

EDIT: I ended up reverting to the laggy scroll as although the speed of moving around the page was working much better with the above method, the whole spreadsheet would occasionally stop rendering correctly with the cursor disappearing, screen not being drawn correctly, etc. What a fiasco. If anyone can use the above info to find a more stable solution I'd love to know.

Here we are in 2024 and this issue has not been resolved. I have a new XPS 15 9530 and Excel is almost unusable! I'm experiencing all the issues (crashes, freezes, sluggish response, etc.) that's been mentioned and happening since at least 2019 according to this thread. I'm going to try what matchindex11 says to see if it helps.

I run my business off this computer and use Excel constantly. This needs to be resolved!

Im seeing issues with excel crashing across multiple customers all with dell hardware however one thing I have noticed recently on alerts is that excel and supportassist are both being listed together as main memory hogs I think I may uninstall supportassist for a a couple of weeks and monitor.