| Office apps crash, lag, or do not respond on my computer |
Problem
When the user opens, edits, searches, or saves an Office (including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) file, symptoms like lagging, slow response, no response (white screen), copy and paste failures, random jumping of the cursor, and crashing occur.
Cause
There is a compatibility issue with the settings in Office apps. When these settings cannot work properly but are still enabled or occupy a lot of system resources, the system will lag, respond slowly, or crash.
Solution
Office apps are developed by Microsoft and are only connected to the Microsoft activation server. Linking the apps with a Microsoft account once will take effect permanently. You are advised to contact Microsoft's customer service for assistance. You can also try the following solutions.
Method 1: If the system lags when you open an Office app, check the CPU or memory usage to determine whether the problem is caused by a single document (not applicable if the Office app crashes).
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to open the Task Manager. For example, when you filter data in a table with about 10,000 rows, the CPU usage of the Excel process increases from 3% to 100%. The computer performance is not good enough to support the computing power for Excel. As a result, the CPU is fully occupied, and the app freezes. The lagging problem also occurs when the source document of this table is operated on the same platform with the same system version and Office version. This indicates that the problem is caused by a single document, not the Office app.
Method 2: Start Microsoft Office in Safe mode (not applicable to scenarios where Microsoft Office crashes).
Press and hold Ctrl and double-click the Office app shortcut. Click Yes when a dialog box is displayed, asking if you want to start the app in Safe Mode. Check whether the Office file responds properly in Safe mode. If the issue persists, go to File > Options > Add-ins in the upper left corner and select COM Add-ins from Manage and click Go. In the displayed dialog box, deselect all options and click OK. If macros are used in this mode, it is recommended that you disable the macros. Restart the Office file and try again.
Method 3: Reset the Office registry.
Press Win+R, and enter "regedit" to open the Registry Editor. Go to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office, and rename this Office folder as Officeold. Then, restart the computer.
Please refer to Backing up and restoring the registry data to back up the registry in advance and exercise caution during registry modification, so as to avoid risks caused by incorrect operations.
Method 4: Change the settings of the Office app.
The following uses an Excel file as an example:
- Go to File > Options > Advanced.
Under Display, select Disable hardware graphics acceleration.
Skip this step if this option is unavailable, as it has been removed from certain versions.
Under General, deselect Update automatic links at open, and select Enable multi-threaded calculation. Then, click OK, and try again.
- Press Win+R, enter "Excel /safe" (note that there is a space after "Excel"), click OK to open the Excel file in Safe mode, and check whether the issue persists.
If the issue persists, go to File > Options > Add-ins, check COM Add-ins and Excel Add-ins, deselect all the options, click OK, and restart the Excel file. If macros are used in this mode, it is recommended that you disable the macros and then restart the Excel file.
Go to File > Options > Add-ins, select COM Add-ins from Manage, and click Go.
In the displayed COM Add-ins dialog box, deselect all options and click OK.
Return to Add-ins, select Excel Add-ins from Manage, and click Go.
In the displayed Add-ins dialog box, deselect all options and click OK.
Method 5: Change the performance settings.
- Check the details and contents of the Excel file as well as the memory occupied by the file: The Excel file may be excessively large and you need to consider the RAM size in the following cases: formulas reference entire columns; array formulas reference unbalanced numbers of elements; there are hundreds of hidden objects, no hidden objects, or objects with the height and width being 0; there are too many styles caused by frequent copying and pasting between workbooks; the defined name is invalid; a large number of shapes and formats are added.
It is recommended that you use VLOOKUP (or any other function for searching) as follows:
- Do not directly reference an entire column or row. You are advised to specify an area with data, for example, M1:M300.
- Do not reference multiple columns and multiple rows at the same time. Otherwise, the memory usage and computing volume spike. (If you do so in a formula, an array will be created, which may cause insufficient memory issues to repeatedly occur.) Before using the formula, you can combine multiple columns or multiple rows into an area for searching. Then, reference this area in the formula. In this way, only a single row, a single column, or an area is referenced.
- If conditions permit, you are advised to sort the column before referencing it. This can reduce the subsequent calculation workload. Then, you can revise the original formula. (An example is LOOKUP($N4,Viewpoint Category!$M:$M,Viewpoint Category!J:J).)
XLOOKUP
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/xlookup-function-b7fd680e-6d10-43e6-84f9-88eae8bf5929
VLOOKUP
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vlookup-function-0bbc8083-26fe-4963-8ab8-93a18ad188a1
Example: An engineer of a carrier uses MachR to open three Excel tables, each of which contains about 10,000 rows of data. When the engineer runs the VLOOKUP function, the Excel file lags or does not respond, or even a white screen is displayed.
It is found through remote troubleshooting that the problem is caused by referencing in formulas. In the VLOOKUP formula, multiple columns are referenced, which involve 100,000 rows. However, only 10,000 rows contain data, and the formula references a large amount of invalid data. As a result, the calculation workload increases, and the system does not respond. The issue is then resolved after the formula is modified.
- Adjusting the priority of the Excel process: If the CPU usage of the Excel process is low, increase the priority of this process to preempt CPU resources. (This setting applies only to the current process. You need to set the priority again after the app is restarted.)
- Set CPU affinity to reduce system lags (applicable to abnormal lagging of the entire system): Go to Task Manager > Details, right-click the Excel process, and choose Set Affinity from the shortcut menu.
Method 6: Uninstall and reinstall the Office app.
- Open Control Panel, go to Uninstall a program. Right-click the Microsoft Office app and choose Uninstall from the shortcut menu.
- After Microsoft Office is uninstalled, log in to the Microsoft official website with the Microsoft account used to activate Microsoft Office. Then, reinstall Microsoft Office and try again.
If the issue persists
If the issue persists, back up your data in advance, record your Office account, and use F10 to restore your computer to its factory settings. If the issue remains unresolved, take your device and proof of purchase to an authorized Huawei Customer Service Center for assistance. (Tip: Feel free to call the Huawei consumer service hotline for assistance before going to a Huawei Customer Service Center.) We will do our best to address your needs.