Forum Discussion
Excel Workbooks with external workbook links loading extremely slowly
I fixed this issue for myself by changing from each cell having an individual formula, to the sheet using an array instead.
You do this by selecting all of the cells you want to take from the other document, going to the other document, selecting all of the data on that side, then hitting Ctrl + Shift + Enter.The formula will end up looking like this
{=path/[data_document.xlsx]Sheet1'!A1:Z500}
FAIR WARNING: If you do this over empty cells, they will become 0 instead of empty, so if you have code that expects a string, you will get a data type mismatch error.
I fixed this issue for myself by changing from each cell having an individual formula, to the sheet using an array instead.
You do this by selecting all of the cells you want to take from the other document, going to the other document, selecting all of the data on that side, then hitting Ctrl + Shift + Enter.
The formula will end up looking like this
{=path/[data_document.xlsx]Sheet1'!A1:Z500}
FAIR WARNING: If you do this over empty cells, they will become 0 instead of empty, so if you have code that expects a string, you will get a data type mismatch error.
The issue with empty cells is not relevant for my needs, but at the very least the workbook opens quickly enough to be usable, and if empty cells are an issue they could be dealt with on the imported side.
While I would still be fascinated to learn why this change of performance occurred so suddenly after many years of consistency, I'm really glad to have a workable solution. Perhaps Excel is just built to favor working with arrays now. At any rate, hope this helps everyone else looking for a solution as well.