Excel Sheet Calculating despite being in manual mode

I realise this is an old posting but for future reference here is a thought (I run into this all of the time):

make certain you set recalc to manaul 

reset recalc before save to manaul (unchecked)

set # of processors to less than you have or excel will consume all resources and will be difficult to stop.

I use large spreadsheets that often require hours to do a full recalc and the above solves my problem. Until ... someone else opens the file and then saves it. in which case the settings get changed.

I have yet to identify any setting that always forces all excel workbooks to never recalc unless explicitly requested. it always wants to "help" be defaulting to auto recalc which can break some workbooks if they reference other files which may not be available. and often sets my pc up to be consumed by the recalc process.csu94