How to stop Excel from automatically checking Workbook performance?

Anonymous
2023-03-06T17:17:06+00:00

Performance check??

The Excel sheet is the way I want it to look and don't want to change it for better performance. I just want Excel to stop prompting me.

Every time I open an Excel sheet, it wants me to do a performance check because of:

"Excess formatting and unneeded metadata cause large, slow workbooks. Check for improvements to performance"

So I find myself X-clicking away this message every time. Because there is no 'excess' of formatting. The Excel sheet simply is a nicely layouted workbook and we want it to be looking this way. We don't need Excel trying to outsmart us and giving this suggestion every time you open the workbook to remove information.

It is only very confusing for not-very-experienced users who also make use of my Excel sheet.

How and where can I set Excel in a way that is stops asking this unwanted question?

  • The question mostly pops-up in the Web version of Office 365.
  • I tried unchecking boxes in the performance check tool, in the desktop version, but to no result.

Would be lovely if someone has a workaround or knows which box needs to be un-checked.

And it would be awesome if a MS engineer helps giving priority to this problem, so that it can be switched of universally.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For business | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Answer accepted by question author
Andreas Killer 144.1K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2025-01-25T10:37:57+00:00

This thread shows that there are a significant number of people complaining about this. Unfortunately, this is only a user forum, we understand your problem, but we cannot do anything to fix it. Only the Excel developers can do this if they are instructed to do so.

As previously stated, this is simply a statistical problem, Microsoft must first recognize that this is a problem. Unfortunately, this is not so easy considering that more than 200,000 people work at Microsoft.

There is a feedback portal where you can cast your vote. There is already a feed on this topic, unfortunately with very few votes. I'm sure if we get as many votes as this post has been viewed, then Microsoft will react.

Anyone reading this, please follow these steps:

Click on this link:
https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/89bb523d-b197-ef11-95f6-0022484d7a88

  1. Sign in
  2. Click the Vote button

@HanzieV:

If you mark this reply as answer, it will be the first to appear when someone views this thread. I hope we can encourage as many people as possible to draw Microsoft's attention to this problem. Unfortunately, this is all we can do for you.

Andreas.

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-03-10T12:57:27+00:00

    I'm having the same issue with a workbook I use daily. I've reviewed the recommended changed and do not want to apply the changes it is recommending, but it pops up constantly. Is there a way to prevent this from popping up? or ignore the recommendations and have it stop recommending the same changes?

    Thanks for any suggestions.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-03-30T13:57:57+00:00

    We don't want to optimize it, it's a input section that has unused cells we want. There is just no way to tell the program to stop checking those locations in spreadsheet or stop checking entirely. So the pop-up keeps intruding on everyone even though everything is working fine.

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-07-26T18:15:14+00:00

    Snow Lu, you are not understanding the point it seems. We WANT the formatting. To optimize the sheet, it REMOVES THE FORMATTING THAT WE PUT THERE ON PURPOSE BECAUSE WE WANT IT. Even if the Excel gods think we should not have it, it doesn't matter. We PAY FOR THE SOFTWARE LICENSE TO BE ABLE TO PUT WHAT WE WANT IN THE CELLS. So let us do that without the annoying banner that some yahoo will eventually click on and ruin the file. So now your click to run, store on the cloud file now needs a constant backup to a non-shared, non-cloud location so it can be reverted to the format it was intended to be, after said yahoo accidentally clicks the "check performance" button and ruins the shared file.

    So things like text alignment (for ease of reading), number format (so we can tell what the real date is not the Julian date), and the color coding (for ease of reading) is what you all at MSFT want us to remove? Why would you allow these things to be altered if it is such a problem? Just put a damn box somewhere in the options to check or uncheck "check workbook performance"

    We can turn the accessibility options off and on, why not the performance?

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-05-03T14:09:45+00:00

    Everyone is mostly aware there is no option to disable this notice. A la coming to this forum thread to convey this problem to those at MS who can help move things along to the right people.

    "Feedback"--Since Microsoft simply dropped "UserVoice" tracking of feature requests we are left with these forums. Uservoice effectively did track everyone's requests and allowed voting to bubble up the most needed features very effectively. But that's gone with no replacement for no real reason other then to avoid accountability or scatter decent. Back to classic no transparency Microsoft ways. And for us, back to random forum posts. Any help would be appreciated from anyone who can bring this up to whomever invented it.

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