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

Anonymous
2018-05-30T21:21:39+00:00

When  I have excel open, even a tiny spreadsheet, and move the window around the screen there is severe lag. The window can keep moving around the screen for a few seconds after I have stopped moving the mouse. I am running windows 10 with all updates installed and Office 365 with all updates installed.

The lag gets worse when connected to an external high res monitor.

This problem does NOT occur with any other application window which can be moved around the screen as fast as I like with no lag.

I am running Surface Pro 3, i5 8Mb Ram with all updates installed.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For business | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-08-19T01:11:16+00:00

    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).

    Yes, you are right.  I should not have simply labeled it a mouse polling rate issue, I was oversimplifying.

    It is definitely due to the underlying structure of MS Office products and their processing throughput.

    Likely, Excel has a much harder time simply because a refresh causes each single cell to be recalculated to be displayed again over and over and that is just madness.

    I really hope they get to work on this.  Even if it means using a simple 'hack' like screenshoting what is visible and displaying that copy during the movement process so that there are no calculations or re-display issues while moving the window.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-08-19T00:47:36+00:00

    The problem occurs with ordinary mice.  This is NOT a gaming mice problem.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-08-12T14:20:39+00:00

    To think logically, if it is a Microsoft problem with either Windows or Office, you would expect them to address it somehow. If it is not a Microsoft problem, you would expect a response that explains why it is not something they can fix.

    I truly do not mean to be negative, but blaming the hardware is a coder's excuse. I have done that myself. Blaming the software is a hardware developer's excuse. I have done that too. Since I do both hardware and software engineering in my career I can acknowledge both. 

    ......

    Todd

    Agreed, this seems to be software. My Office applications worked fine until I switched from an older Logitech to a high-poll Logitech (G502). If I drop down to 125khz (from 1000khz), it works as expected.

    No other windows application has this issue, so I don't think it's OS related unless it's specific to Office apps and an API only they use. Saying it's a hardware issue doesn't seem plausible, as it seems repeatable with multiple mice running high-poll frequencies, and it seems to scale (500khz is a little better than 1000khz). All the mouse is doing is sending movement/location data, I don't see how hardware could affect only a particular group of apps (Office), that'd be a very specific hardware issue.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-08-09T19:21:10+00:00

    To think logically, if it is a Microsoft problem with either Windows or Office, you would expect them to address it somehow. If it is not a Microsoft problem, you would expect a response that explains why it is not something they can fix.

    I truly do not mean to be negative, but blaming the hardware is a coder's excuse. I have done that myself. Blaming the software is a hardware developer's excuse. I have done that too. Since I do both hardware and software engineering in my career I can acknowledge both. 

    In this case, there most definitely is a problem. The problem manifests itself in Excel and Project in my case. this likely means that these two apps have a bad design managing multi-thread operations. This could be either Windows or Office. It could mean that the hardware is not "good enough," but honestly, fixing the hardware is simply covering up the real software issue.

    My computer is completely managed and locked down, so I cannot change any system settings. The option to turn off the screen update when moving the window makes the most sense as a hardware workaround. But I cannot do that.

    Oh well, I give at this point. I will have to retrain my mouse hand to stop moving 1-2 seconds before the window moves to the final position.

    Todd

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-08-08T17:49:46+00:00

    The polling rate can have different effects in the various Office applications because each program is coded totally independently. They started from totally separate code sources. After they were lumped in to the "Office" marketing basket MS started sharing a little code and a few design standards. But even then they were independent.

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