Are you familiar with strategies for handling work on large Excel files without crashing Windows? This article offers a detailed approach to achieving a consistent working experience in Microsoft Excel across many versions, including 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2019. Combine one or multiple tips to safeguard large Excel files from freezing, crashing, or experiencing sluggish performance on your PC.

What has been your experience working with a large Excel file on Windows 10, specifically one that is around 10MB in size? Actually, accountants are known to generate Excel files that exceed 10MB in size. Many individuals have observed that when dealing with sizable files, Excel is prone to crashing. Could the crash be caused by the size of the file?

In reality, it is not the large file sizes that are to blame for the Excel crashing issues. It is commonly believed that workbooks become unstable, crash, or freeze when they reach a size of at least 20MB. This is due to the significant processing power of modern computers. Therefore, it is important to take into account additional factors that can cause Excel to crash, even if the file you are working on is smaller than 20MB.

Reasons why large Excel files crash

Other than the fact that the Excel file is very big (over 20MB), it’s likely that your Excel is not stable to use. Basically, these are the factors:

• Setting up the layout, colors, and forms of a worksheet
• A worksheet with math problems and numbers
• Problems with the computer’s RAM

A Guide to Recovering Corrupted Large Excel Files

Before you can figure out how to keep large Excel files from falling, you need to know how to recover those Excel files so that you can fix the problem as much as possible. How can you quickly fix Excel that is corrupted? Use a professional tool like BLR Tools to recover your lost files. This advanced file recovery tool fixes damaged Excel files and gets back the data in .XLS and .XLSX files. It solves all kinds of Excel corruption errors, like format that can’t be recognized, content that can’t be read, Excel startup errors, and more.

Follow the steps below to recover large Excel files that you can’t get to. You can also fix broken Word, PowerPoint, and PDF files with BLR Tools.

1. First, you need to download and launch the BLR data recovery tool on your PC or laptop. Select “File recover” to restore damaged Office documents, such as Word, Excel, PDF, and more. Please click on the “Add Files” button to select the documents that are currently corrupted.

 

1. Next, in order to retrieve multiple files simultaneously, simply click on the “recover all” button. To get back a single document, move your mouse over the file you want to get back and click the “recover” button. You can also look at a sample of the papers by clicking on the eye button.

 

1. Simply, click on the “Save” button to save the document you have selected. Choose the option “Save All” to securely save all of the files that have been successfully recovered. Select “View recovered” to find the recovered folder.

Work on Large Excel Files Without Crashing in Windows

“Key”

A substantial Excel file typically holds numerous rows of vital data, complete with various styles and formulas. It is critical to handle the workbook with extreme caution and establish a live backup to protect against unanticipated data loss caused by Excel crashing, becoming unresponsive, or unexpectedly stopping to operate before you can save. We highly recommend enabling the autosave feature in Excel to ensure that your workbook is saved at regular intervals of 1~5 minutes.

Now, let’s address the issue of a slow workbook when opening or editing it in Excel. We’ll focus on the three factors we previously discussed. Whether you’re dealing with a small or large Excel file, the solutions provided in each section should help resolve the crashing issue in Excel.

Step 1: Throw away of any extra coding

You can quickly find the right information on your worksheet by formatting cells that aren’t being used. However, formatting cells that are being used (especially whole rows and columns) can make your workbook’s file size grow quickly. Clean Excess Cell Formatting is a Microsoft add-on that you can find on the “Inquire” tab in Microsoft Office 365 and Office Professional Plus 2013. To get the Inquire add-in to work, do the following if you don’t see the Inquire tab in Excel:

• Select File > Options > Add-Ins.
• Select COM Add-ins under Manage and click Go.
• Check Inquire in COM Add-Ins and click OK. The ribbon should show the inquiry tab.

Remove irrelevant formatting in the current worksheet:

• Click Inquire > Clean Excess Cell Formatting.
• Select to clean the current worksheet or all worksheets. Click Yes to save sheet changes or No to cancel after clearing superfluous formatting.

Step 2: Remove Any Unused Styles

A persistent Excel crash is the next indication of an Excel workbook with too many styles. This particular error, “Too many different cell formats,” is likely to be the source of the problem. Thus, you should refrain from using many styles on a single spreadsheet. Workbooks with several styles may be cleaned up by using one of the third-party solutions listed below, which is recommended by Microsoft.

• XLStyles Tool for Excel (xlsx, xlsm).
• Remove Styles Add-in for binary Excel formats (xls, xlsb), password-protected, and encrypted documents.

Step 3: Stay away from conditional styles.

• Click on Conditional Formatting under “Home.”
• Pick clear rules.
• Pick out the clear rules from the whole sheet.
• Repeat the steps to clear all the sheets that follow the rule.

Step 4: Reduce Formulas and Calculations

If, after the three-step inspection and removing extraneous cell formatting, styles, and conditional formatting, you still struggle to work on a huge Excel file, review your worksheet’s formulas and computations. It’s not necessary to examine every calculation and formula in the file, but the main ones need a lot of computer resources.

• Formulas that talk about whole sections or rows
• SUMIF, COUNTIF, and SUMPRODUCT are all ways to add up numbers.
• A lot of formulas
• Volatile things
• A list of rules

Step 5: Consider the computer RAM problem

Finally, if none of the above steps make working on a large Excel file faster in Windows 10, it’s possible that there is a problem with your computer’s memory.

In conclusion

The current article discusses the most common ways to open large Excel files without stopping or fix problems with Excel not responding to large amounts of data. You can work on large Excel files without crashing in the best way possible. Take the BLR data recovery tool and fix your broken Excel files so they work again.