Beginner Question - Sheets I'm editing become inactive until I click another sheet or workbook (Intermittent)

[Conor26667]

Hi there, everyone!

I just registered to the forum to ask about something that has been mildly inconvenient for a few months now. I'm a bit of a beginner, but I've committed to getting better at using Excel going forward (including starting a training course). So, here's what I've got:

I created a workbook to track a potential stock trading strategy over time. It has 2 main components: prices at various intervals and percentage changes relative those prices. This workbook has 5 sheets that I use, each of which shows basically the same information in a different way. All the sheets use formulas to calculate the percentage changes and a hypothetical account value (as if I were trading an account in real life). Based on the values in each cell, I color code them either light green or light red.

The problem is that while I'm editing any of these sheets, the sheet will suddenly not allow any more editing. When it happens I can't type in any cell, change a cell's color or other properties, scroll using the scrollwheel, use the keyboard to navigate (arrow keys, tab, enter, etc), or copy and paste anything. I can click on any cell and highlight it, and scroll using the the scroll bars, but I can't seem to do much else. However, as soon as I click any cell in another sheet or even a different workbook, it unlocks the sheet I was working on and I can go back to editing as if nothing had happened. Sometimes, this will fix it for quite a while, other times it will only fix it for 1 or 2 edits. Once it starts, it seems to get worse (more frequent) the more editing I try to do. At it's worst, I'll edit a cell and then have to go into another sheet each time I want to edit another cell. This is a big issue when I've got to go down the line across multiple sheets editing 20 or 30 cells (changing sheets between each edit). I'm not sure what is causing this to happen and could use some guidance on how to prevent it from happening in the future. It generally happens everyday, several times a day (worse in the afternoon as I keep the workbook open from about 8:30am to 5:30pm). Could I just be leaving it open too long? Are there just too many formulas in the workbook? Is there a simple setting I can change?

Any assistance is appreciated.

 

[JLGWhiz]

Perhaps simply setting calculations to manual, perform all your editing tasks, then setting calculations back to automatic might do the trick.

That's fine if you don't need to see any of the results as the edit progresses.