Brendan Hughes

Hi all

I’m trying to use Excel to set up a comparison between 15 different countries (one column each) who have each passed between 15-40 laws. So I copy a text description of each law from each country’s report (Word), and paste it in a cell in the country’s column, the text being anywhere btwn 200-600 characters (spaces included) per law.

I’m only as far across as column F, and suddenly it is incredibly slow - from commanding “paste”, I have to wait 20 seconds or more before the text appears in the cell. The delay didn’t gradually increase, it just jumped from nothing to this big. It happened yesterday afternoon, and again first thing this morning, so I know the clipboard isn’t full.

Any ideas? Is it that Excel doesn’t like so much text? There are no calculations. I have about 5 apps open (IE5, NN4, Word, Excel), PC is Win NT, maybe 800mhz processor.

Haven't used Word as I think the table will spread over several pages and I prefer Excel's resizing ability. But if you convince me it's a s/w problem, I'll change it

Thanks for any thoughts

Brendan

Dracoro

Go to www.mrexcel.com

I use it a lot and they are excellent.

BTW, what are you pasting from? maybe the text is formatted somewhat and excel is trying to parse it. Or try pasting values only.

HTH.

Fig

Have you got any formulae set on the spreadsheet? If so, try going to Options and switching off calculation to manual (Tools > Options > Calculate tab)

andymar00

when you cut and paste it save it on the clipboard and this fills up the memory more memory will speed things up

Brendan Hughes

Thank you. It seems to be something to do with the formatting of the Word text; if I "paste special" as text, rather than as Word Document Object (?!) as it suggests, it goes in instantly.

Odd, as I've pasted so much from similar docs before without any problem. Ah well. 4 secs to paste special is a lot quicker than 20 seconds to wait.

Mick

iTrader: (1)

I did a large Excel file with loads of pasted in data and it took aeons to even open.

I selected all the data and cut it out, pasted into another sheet and then 'special pasted' back 'values' only - that had a huge effect!

Good luck

Mick

Nicks VR4

Try using Access instead no limits on cells