How to Handle Large Excel Files Without Crashing: A 5-Step Guide

How does one fare when working with large Excel files (say, around 10 MB) in Windows 10? In reality, accountants, for instance, generate Excel files much larger than 10 MB. Some have observed that large files can cause Excel to crash. Is file size the culprit behind these crashes?

In reality, the size of the file isn't the root cause for Excel crashes. Given the powerful processing capabilities of modern computers, instability, crashes, or freezing aren't supposed to happen until your spreadsheet grows to at least 20 MB. Thus, if your working file is much smaller than that, you should consider other factors that cause Excel to crash.

Why does a large Excel file crash?

Aside from large Excel files that exceed 20 MB, there are other factors that can cause instability in Excel. These mainly include:

• Formatting, styles, and shapes in a spreadsheet
• Calculations and formulas in a spreadsheet
• Issues with a computer's RAM

How to Repair a Corrupted Large Excel File – First Aid Measures

Before delving into how to prevent large Excel files from crashing, it's essential to know how to repair them to minimize the loss. How can you promptly fix a corrupted Excel file? Try a professional file repair tool like the Fixo Document Repair Tool. This advanced file repair utility resolves issues with corrupted Excel files and recovers data from .XLS/.XLSX files. It fixes all sorts of Excel errors, such as unsupported format, unreadable content, runtime errors in Excel, and more.

With this file repair tool, you can:

• Repair corrupted Excel files, including worksheets, images, charts, formulas, etc.
• Fix multiple .XLS and .XLSX files in one go.
• Repair damaged Excel files from 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, 2003, and 2000 versions.

To fix a large Excel file that's not opening, follow this guide. The Fixo tool can also help repair corrupted Word, PowerPoint, and PDF documents.

Step 1: Download and run Fixo on your computer or laptop. Select "File Repair" to fix corrupted Office documents, including Word, Excel, PDF, and more. Click "Add File" to select the damaged document.

Step 2. Click “Repair All” to fix multiple files at once. If you only want to repair one document, hover over it and click “Repair.” You can also preview the document by clicking the eye icon.

Select the document to repair

Step 3. Click “Save” to save the selected document. Choose “Save All” to save all repaired files. Select “View Repaired Files” to locate the folder with your repaired files.

How to Handle Large Excel Files Without Crashing: 5 Methods

Next, we will address the three factors to resolve the issue of slow opening or editing of an Excel workbook. Regardless of whether it's a small or large Excel file, the solutions provided under each section should be helpful in preventing Excel from freezing.

Step 1: Remove Overformatting

Formatting cells in a worksheet can make key information stand out, but formatting unused cells – especially entire rows and columns – can quickly bloat the file size. Microsoft offers an add-in called “Remove Excess Cell Formatting” that's available in the Review tab of Excel in Office 365 and Office Professional Plus 2013. If you don't see a Review tab in Excel, enable the Review add-in with these steps:

1. Click **File** > **Options** > **Add-ins**. 2. In the **Manage** dropdown, choose **COM Add-ins** and click **Go**.

In the COM Add-ins box, check the box next to Inquire, and then click OK. You should now see an Inquire tab on the Ribbon.

To remove all extra formatting from the current worksheet, do this:

On the Query tab, click Remove Extra Cell Formatting.

• Choose whether to clear the active worksheet or all worksheets. After removing the extra formatting, click Yes to save the changes to the sheet or No to cancel.

Step 2: Remove unused styles

Using too many different styles in an Excel workbook can lead to a specific “Too many cell formats” error, which is accompanied by frequent crashes. You should therefore avoid using multiple styles on a single worksheet. For workbooks that already contain a variety of styles, you can clean them up with one of the third-party tools recommended by Microsoft.

• Excel formats (xlsx, xlsm) - with the XLStyles tool.
• Binary Excel formats (xls, xlsb), password-protected workbooks, and encrypted workbooks - with the Remove Styles add-in.

Step 3: Remove conditional formatting

1. Under the **Home** tab, click on **Conditional Formatting**. 2. Select **Clear Rules**. 3. Choose **Clear Rules from Entire Worksheet**. 4. If the rule is applied to multiple sheets, repeat these steps for each sheet to remove the rule from all of them.

Step 4: Remove Calculations and Formulas

If you've gone through the previous three steps and removed unnecessary cell formatting, styles, and conditional formatting, but are still struggling with a large Excel workbook, you may need to look at your formulas and calculations. You don't have to check every calculation and formula in the file, but the major ones can consume a lot of computer resources.

• Formulas that reference entire rows or columns • SUMIF, COUNTIF, and SUMPRODUCT functions • Large numbers of formulas • Volatile functions • Array formulas

Step 5: Check your RAM

Last but not least, if the above four steps can't help speed up processing large Excel files, the problem might be your RAM. Please follow these 10 tips to fix high RAM usage issue in Windows 10.

Conclusions

This article covers common solutions to open large Excel files without crashing or fixing unresponsive Excel issues with massive data. You can employ the most effective methods to handle large Excel files. If your Excel files are corrupted, you can use file repair software to restore them to their complete state.