Forum Discussion
Excel Powerpivot based spreadsheet freezes all office aps
I have a powerpivot based excel sheet that I have had for years without issues. Its a bit slow as it has to run a function across multiple stock webpages to extract stock price data. In the past when it was refreshing I could still use my Outlook, but not outlook is frozen until the refresh finishes. In fact while it is running a background query you cannot get excel to maximise on the screen it just hides in the taskbar.
I have done a full reinstall of Office and still the same issue. Its extremely irritating, but I dont know what could have changed. Weirdly if I actively click refresh all in excel I can still use Outlook, so only when the automated refresh set for every 10 minutes activates is there an issue.
Any thoughts appreciated
3 Replies
It sounds like Excel’s background refresh is locking Office resources. This is a known issue, especially after recent updates. A few quick fixes:
- Disable background refresh: In Power Query, right-click each query → Properties → uncheck "Enable background refresh".
- Use a VBA timer macro instead of Excel’s auto-refresh to control timing.
- Check for conflicting add-ins in Excel and Outlook.
- Monitor CPU usage during refresh—heavy queries can freeze other apps.
Vikram_Apps4Rent
So I am using the "refresh every" box on the query property page to control the timing of refreshes. I've turned off background refresh, but are you saying I need to turn off the properties refresh options and use VBA to refresh each connection on a timer? Question is how to do that if the Query is called "PricePort" as I've not used VBA before
Thanks
Please verify the potential causes:
- CPU & Memory usage
- Any Office Application even Windows update recently
- Conflicts with Add-ins
- Data Model corruption such as PowerPivot
