You changed one cell, and Excel froze. The title bar says Not responding and the window has gone pale. Before you do anything drastic, know that this very often means Excel is busy, not broken.
Why Excel goes quiet
By default Excel recalculates formulas whenever something changes. In a large workbook, one edit can set off millions of calculations. While Excel does that, it may stop redrawing its window and stop answering clicks.
Excel can tell you what it is doing. When it is busy, that appears in the status bar at the bottom of the window. [R1] Look there first.
Some things make a workbook much slower to recalculate. Formulas that Excel recalculates every time, such as INDIRECT and OFFSET, are common ones. [R3]
Step 1: Wait
Microsoft's advice is to let the task in progress finish before you try other actions. [R1] Clicking around, pressing keys, or opening other windows can only make a queue longer.
Give it a few minutes. Check whether the status bar is changing, and whether the PC's fan or disk activity suggests work is going on. A calculation that is making progress is not a freeze.
Step 2: Try Esc
Excel has a setting for which key interrupts a recalculation, and Esc is one of the choices. [R2] If a calculation started because you typed in a cell, pressing Esc once may stop it.
This is not guaranteed. Excel answers the key only when it next checks for input, which may be a while. Do not press it repeatedly.
Step 3: Switch to manual calculation
When Excel comes back, switch it to manual calculation so it stops recalculating after every change:
- Open the Formulas tab.
- Choose Calculation Options, then Manual.
Microsoft suggests this as a test when complex formulas make Excel unresponsive. [R1] In manual mode Excel recalculates only when you press F9, or when you save. [R3]
Two things to know before you do this:
- It affects every open workbook, not only the slow one. The setting is also stored in a workbook when you save it, so the next person to open it gets manual mode too. [R3]
- Numbers on screen may be out of date until you press F9. Excel shows "Calculate" in the status bar when a recalculation is waiting.
When you are done, switch back to Automatic.
What if it never finishes?
If the window has not changed for a long time, and the status bar and disk activity show nothing happening, Excel may be stuck rather than busy.
What ending Excel costs. Save anything you can first, from another Excel window if you have one. If you end Excel with End task in Task Manager [R5], everything you have not saved is at risk. Excel's recovery files only hold what was saved at the last AutoRecover save, so the most recent minutes can be missing. [R4]
After you restart Excel, look for the Document Recovery pane. Do not delete anything from Excel's recovery folders until you have opened what you need. Where those files live is explained in "Where does Office keep unsaved and recovered files?".
What should I do now?
- Look at the status bar to see what Excel says it is doing.
- Wait several minutes before deciding anything.
- Try Esc once.
- After it recovers, set calculation to Manual and save.
- Only if it is truly stuck, use End task and then check Document Recovery when Excel reopens.