Forum Discussion
Excel freezes when formatting cells
When I try to format a cell in Excel - bolding, underlining, switching font size - the program freezes and I need to re-start. Is a new issue from last 2 days having worked without problems previously.
I've tried program repair, updates and re-installing Office and running in safe mode. No luck. Any suggestions for how I solve?
Many thanks!
- This may sound ridiculously simple, but try to change your default printer to PDF. I have suffered from the same problem and this helped instantly.
- This may sound ridiculously simple, but try to change your default printer to PDF. I have suffered from the same problem and this helped instantly.
Emiru Thank you. Thank you. I just had the same problem for the past 8 hours. I went in to set my default printer. I did not have one set. I had powered down my printer the night before. I set the default printer to the pdf option. It worked. Thanks, again.
- can't imagine how on earth you ever figured this out, but i'm glad you did, worked perfectly, thanks!
charlie1volley Very strange, but that does appear to work. I just changed my default printer to Microsoft PDF and the format cells no longer pauses/hangs Excel for 40-60 seconds. Great workaround, now let's see if the good folks at Microsoft can fix that one 🙂
Tim_Hill2190 so we are now a year on from this issue being highlighted and Microsoft still haven't issued a simple fix? Don't they monitor this community?? Obviously too busy working on Windows 11 which is going to be just horrendous for most of us.
- Setting the pdf printer as default was the solution in a Office 2019!!
- Unfortunately, I can't help you there. The only thing I have to offer is an old ticket through office 2016 with roughly the same problem. Take a look, maybe this will help you.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/microsoft-excel-2016-crashes-on-formatting-cells/51e29d30-82b0-4eae-bc3f-577b97d04bc9
Nikolino
I know I don't know anything (Socrates)I am also faced the same issue you just have to restart Print spooler service and issue got resolved.
Thank you for your feedback.
I would be happy if you would describe the steps (what exactly you did) to us.
This would also help others here in the forum.
When describing, please also describe the digital environment.
Office version, operating system, storage medium (hard drive, OneDrive, Sharepoint, etc.), printer model.
Thank you,
I know I don't know anything (Socrates)
- Wie kann ich eine 15 spaltige und 1000 Zeilen Datei mit unterschiedlichen Zahlen von 1-300 so reihen, daß alle Zahlen aufsteigend in der Zeile gereiht werden
- This is simply AMAZING and WEIRD! hahahaha
Changing default printer to a PDF printer seems to have worked for me and it makes sense regarding when this started happening. I had an older personal laptop and everything had been fine with Office apps (2010 version) and then I started noticing this problem. I've recently purchased a new laptop and everything was fine at first but then suddenly this started happening again. I realize now that it's related to having multiple printers from different sites installed. I'm working part time and using this laptop and the previous for personal use and for work using a separate user account. All printers installed show in both accounts and I'm guessing that the trashing or delay is caused by Excel trying to attach the the last printer used. Setting default to a PDF printer that's always available prevents this from happening. Thanks for the useful hint
