Why does my excel window lag so much when moved around the screen? no other app windows have the problem

This is a useful answer, but I disagree with characterizing high mouse polling rate as the problem, and with characterizing the reducing of mouse polling rate as a solution. A high mouse polling rate is a feature of some mice, and is desirable for some users--gamers in particular.

Even with the mouse polling turned down to 125, when I move Excel around it is still still noticeably more laggy than other applications on a 3.6 GHz i9-9900K with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti.

I think the real problem is that Excel is doing too much uninterruptible synchronous processing every time the window position changes (or maybe worse--every time the mouse is polled).

Reducing the mouse polling rate may be an acceptable workaround (not solution) to this problem for most non-gamers, but Microsoft really does need to fix the issue in Excel.

I don't mean to pick on the author of this answer, or to be too critical of answer itself. It is valuable information. I do want to join the chorus of people calling out the fact that this is an Excel performance problem--not a mouse polling rate problem, and it is Microsoft's responsibility to provide an actual solution rather than requiring this workaround.

The Problem: Report Rate on your mouse is too high.  It is polling too many times before the refresh on your screen and it lags to catch up.

The Solution: Lower the polling rate to at least 500 or lower.  After selecting 500, it fixed it for me and lowering to 250 and 125 felt the same so I stayed at 500.

First check your polling rate

If you are over 500Hz, then this fix is for you.

For my Logitech G502, that means opening the software application > customize onboard profile (the moues/memory chip icon) > report rate > selecting 500 for polling rate.

• If you don't have Logitech, try to find the report rate or polling rate or reports per second for your software and lowering it to 500 or lower
• If you use Window's driver for your mouse, try installing the proper software for your mouse so you can change the report rate
• If you can't do that, try downloading mouse rate adjusting program, you can find some on Tom's Hardware and simply adjust to 250 or 500 instead of 1000

Just recently received a new Win10 laptop from my company.  I'm also experiencing this issue with Excel 2016 as well as Outlook 2016.  I can also confirm that this is occurring with both an old POS Dell wired USB mouse as well as a not quite so POS (but still old) Logitech wireless mouse.   It is NOT because of polling rate with a gamer mouse.

So i believe i found a solution for this as far as Word goes. if you go to the bottom of the word window youll notice "read mode" "print layout" and "web layout". Print layout is the default. 

Switch to "read mode" and you'll notice that the problem is magically gone. Now Switch back to the default print mode and you may notice that this completely solved the issue.  (im using word 2016)  Not sure if this solution can be replicated for excel as i haven't tried to mess with that application yet. 

This isnt a hardware issue nor is it a windows issue. Its not the consumers fault in any way. This is lazy coding on Microsoft's part that caused this issue clearly, since it is so easily fixed by simply switching from print mode to read mode then back again. The fact that these complaints have gone unanswered for so long is shameful. Shame on you microsoft.

Hi Javier

I'm running Excel version 1902 (Build 11328.20146 Click-to-Run) on the Monthly Channel but can't say when the problem was fixed for me as I gave up looking for fixes.

I was originally on version 1805 build 9330.2087 when I first posted the problem back in May 2018. It appeared to be fixed when I updated to Windows 1809 but the problem returned soon after.

Cheers

It appears that the Microsoft workers quit trying to help solve the problem. Silence...

I have this same issue with my HP Windows 10 work laptop that I was issued a couple weeks ago. Excel is the only application that does this. Kind of like drifting your car around a mountain road. As an IT worker, I prefer to have my screens do what they're expected to do; leave the drifting to the car.