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.
- Certainly not a long-term fix for all situations, although it does help for instances where entire ranges of cells are being referenced. It seems like every instance of a formula referencing an outside workbook increases the loading time, so any way to reduce the number of formulas helps.
As for what caused this to happen and why it has not been addressed, I have no idea. I'm sure there are many, many users being affected by this, and many probably have not yet made the connection between slow load times and external references. Needs to be resolved ASAP.
