Should You Wait for a Response or Close When Excel Frozen but Not Crashed? 10 Tricks Here

Each manner of the following examples are prone to cause Excel freezing, hanging up, or not responding for a while, sometimes forever unless you close the frozen window and restart.

When copying files
When saving as a file
When deleting rows or columns
When undoing a change
When filtering
When an Excel file is loading

Are you one of the Excel users who are caught up in an unstable Excel in Windows 10, 8.1, 8 or 7? The complete reasons behind a crashing Excel program or a specific Excel workbook are hard to list out one by one, but the troubleshooting steps are pretty much the same. Compared with an entirely crashed Excel issue, what we are going to discuss here is kind of easier to handle that your Excel frozen but not crashed.

 Tip: If you're working on a large Excel file that starts freezing, wait for a couple of minutes before proceeding with the article's advise for how to unfreeze Excel. For a file containing a wide range of formatting, formulas, links and styles, processing the workbook would certainly take more time, and we need you to be patient to wait for Excel loading the content fully.

Follow the quick Navigation to all solutions to Excel frozen but not crashed according to two scenarios:

Scenarios	Troubleshooting
#1. Excel Program is Freezing	Trick 1. Start Excel in Safe Mode Full steps Trick 2. Update Excel (Office suite) Full steps Trick 3. Repair Office installation Full steps Trick 4. Remove broken add-ins Full steps Trick 5. Stop or wait process in use Full steps Trick 6. Modify advanced settings Full steps Trick 7. Increase C drive space... Full steps
#2. Excel Worksheet is Freezing	Trick 8. Run The Inspect Workbook tool Full steps Trick 9. Remove Conditional Formatting Rules Full steps Trick 10. Disable Calculating Option Full steps

1. Start Excel in Safe Mode

Safe mode lets you start Excel without encountering certain startup programs

Press and hold Windows + R keys to bring up the Run box
Type excel.exe /safe in Run and press Enter

start excel in safe mode

2. Update Excel (Basically the Entire Office Suite)

Maybe the issue that causes Excel to freeze has been resolved in the latest update released by Microsoft

Go to File and click on Account
Click on Update Options and select Update Now located under Product Information

update excel to the lastest version

Older Microsoft before Office 2010 has a different path to get the update:

Go to File and click on Help
Click on Check for updates

3. Repair Microsoft Office Installation

Fix the issue with the ystem and registry files associated with MS Office

Press Windows +R keys and type appwiz.cpl and click OK to open Programs and Features in Control Panel
Locate Microsoft Office among the available programs, right-click on it and choose Change

repair microsoft office 1

Select Quick Repair and click the Repair button

repair microsoft office 2

4. Remove Broken Add-ins

Improper Add-ins can occasionally interfere, or conflict with Excel, making it hang up

Run Excel in Safe Mode at first
click File > Options > Add-ins
Select COM Add-ins, and click Go
Clear all the check boxes in the list, and click OK
Close and restart Excel

remove broken add-ins in excel

5. Stop or Wait for Other Processes Using Excel

Many activities executed by Excel at one time are likely to cause one workbook freezing, especially you opened a huge workbook

If you're editing one workbook but the other one is being printed in the background, Excel may freeze. There is not much thing you can do in this case. All you need is to:

Stop the unnecessary activity in one workbook that is currently open, or
Wait for the other workbook finishes its task, and Exel will resume to work as normal

6. Modify Advanced Settings in Excel

Enabling "Show Insert Options buttons" and "Show Paste Options button when content is pasted" can cause a delay in Excel

Open Microsoft Excel
Click on File and then on Options
Click on Advanced
Untick the check boxes next to The Show Insert Options buttons and Show Paste Options button when content is pasted
Click the OK button to save the changes.

show insert options buttons in excel

7. Increase C Drive Space

If you installed the Office suite in the system drive, insufficent disk space will slow down the Excel performance, and gradually crash Excel

Download and install Qiling Partition Master
Follow the video guide to increase C drive space

8. Run The Inspect Workbook tool

A general troubleshooting method within the Excel program for various Excel issues, including Excel frozen and crash

Open the workbook
Click on File and then on Info
Click on the button preceeding Inspect Workbook and then on Inspect Document
Select all the applicable conditions in the window and click on Inspect

inspect workbook tool

9. Remove Conditional Formatting Rules

Conditional formatting rules are often treated as a real burden for Excel to run smoothly

Open Excel
Select cells (if you want to remove formatting from certain cells, not from the entire spreadsheet)
Go to the Home tab and click on Conditional formatting under Styles
Click on the Clear rules option which is the right one for you
Select Clear Rules from Entire Sheet

10. Disable the "When calculating this workbook" Option

Many calculations in Excel can freeze the worksheet when you open or close it

Open Excel, click on File and select Options
Click on Advanced
Uncheck the Update links to other documents option
Click on OK

disable calculating option in excel

Suplementary - Are You Interested in Comprehensive Excel Recovery and Repair Utility?

After reviewing the 10 tricks that are exclusively for solving the Excel frozen but not crashed issue, you should be clear how to react according to the two scenarios. In the final, as a complementary solution for freezing Excel that might cause data loss, we feel it necessary to introduce a reputable data recovery program - Deep Data Recovery, for you to recover lost and deleted Excel files.

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Any one who is interested in the program can watch this video guide to learn how to recover deleted files of different types, including pictures, videos, Excel workbooks, Word documents, and emails...