Increase the performance of spreadsheets

If a spreadsheet is taking a long time to import or its performance seems slow, it may contain redundant information. You can take the following steps to increase the performance of your spreadsheet.

Excel saves the parts of each worksheet that contain data and/or formatting. However, empty cells that don’t contain data, but do contain formatting, bloat the saved file. When imported into Squirrel a bloated file will take longer to load and will perform more slowly.

To remedy this, open the file in Excel and use the key combination CTRL+END on each sheet. The cursor will move to the cell that Excel considers to be the last cell in the sheet. Usually, this will be a cell with data in it that is furthest down and to the right in the sheet, however, due to redundant formatting, this can sometimes be a cell beyond the range of the data.

Select the rows and columns outside of the data range that contain formatting information. Then, from the menu bar select:

Home > Editing > Clear > Clear All

Repeat this for all affected sheets, save the file, and then import the workbook into Squirrel.

For more details on the clearing process see the Microsoft documentation here.