Solved: Excel Not Responding, How to Save?

MS Excel is one of the exceptional tools to collect, visualize, evaluate and share data across Windows PC and Mac. Unfortunately, there may be instances when it stops working, especially when saving spreadsheets. If Excel is not responding, how do you save it? The main reasons why Excel becomes unresponsive are that there isn't enough space to save an Excel file, multiple applications are running and your computer is too slow to work efficiently.

4 Fixes for Excel Not Responding

In this case, you should wait about 5 seconds to 5 minutes to see if the program is working normally. If you want to rule out this error, these are the 4 best solutions.

Method 1. Stop using Excel and restore unsaved Excel worksheets using recovery software.

It can be annoying when an unsaved Excel file disappears and cannot be recovered, especially when you work with it for a long time. However, there is still optimism: third-party data recovery software can locate accidentally deleted Excel files on your drive and, if successful, recover them.

So it's possible that you may be able to recover XLSX/XLS files. The most commonly used data recovery software on the market is MyRecover.

• It has a high recovery rate, up to 95%, and high speed. Thanks to its advanced scanning algorithms, it can find all deleted or lost data in minutes or even longer.
• It is compatible with more than 200 file formats, not only recovering Excel, but also Word , Excel, PPT, JPG, PNG, MP3, SVG, MP4, WMV, 3FR, X3F, ZIP, etc.
• Quickly recover deleted or lost Excel files on Windows 7, 8, 10, 11 etc and preview them.
• Save the recovered files with their original name, format, quality and path.

Step 1. Install and run MyRecover on your computer. Hover your mouse over the drive where you previously saved the deleted files and click the Scan button.

Step 2. Quick Scan and Deep Scan can locate all deleted Excel files and other lost files on the selected partition/drive. During the scan, you can search, filter and recover unsaved Excel files.

Step 3: Check the scan results, select all the lost Excel files and click the "Recover x file" button to recover deleted files.You will be prompted to select a location for saving. Select a new location to avoid overwriting the data.

Method 2. Wait for Microsoft Excel to react again

Wait for at least 5 seconds or up to 5 minutes to see if the application can run regularly while the computer is still up and responding. Generally, a spinning wheel indicates that Excel or the system is working on some demanding task that requires more time.

Usually, it only takes a few seconds to resume work if there are problems such as Outlook not responding or the Excel/Word application not working; if you get stuck and wait more than five minutes, you should shut down the program and try to save the document before expecting it to work fine on its own.

Method 3: Try saving Excel files using the save shortcut path

There are many methods for saving Excel files in Excel. However, one of the best methods for saving files is to use save shortcuts. Finding the file selection and saving the workbook may take some time. You can save an Excel file in one step. If you want to save your work, press the shortcut key.

Step 1: After working with the Excel workbook, press the key combination "Ctrl + S".

Step 2. The "Save this file" dialog box opens, where you can change the name and specify the location of the file and press "save".

Step 3. From now on, you can simply replace the current file whenever you want to save it, using the Ctrl + S key combination.

Method 4: Forcibly shutdown Excel and restore unsaved Excel files

If you find that Excel refuses to respond when you try to save, you need to take the necessary steps. First of all, you need to restore the previously saved spreadsheet, as permanent data loss would be terrible. To force shutdown Excel on Mac and Windows, and restore unsaved Excel files, follow these steps carefully:

Step 1. Start "Task Manager" by pressing "Ctrl + Shift + Esc" on the keyboard.

Step 2. Ctrl+Click "Task Manager", select "Ctrl+Excel", press "OK", then select "Task Manager".

Step 3. Press the "Quit Task" button to force quit Excel.

How to help Excel to avoid errors

The solutions below will help you avoid Excel not responding to errors:

• Updating Excel

In some cases, bugs and other software problems can cause Excel to become unresponsive. The error message Microsoft Excel is not responding can then be remedied by updating the Excel application.

• Detect and disable antivirus.

Anti-virus software is essential to ensure the security of your device. However, if your antivirus software interferes with Microsoft Office programs such as Excel, it can cause Excel to freeze or stop working. You must therefore disable it and reopen the Excel document.

• Repairing damaged MS Office

Another possible cause of the "Excel not responding" problem is a damaged or defective Microsoft Office product. By repairing Microsoft Office documents, you can fix this error.

• Install the latest Windows and Office updates.

If Windows and Microsoft Office have not been updated, this problem may also occur. Therefore, make sure that you have the latest updates for Microsoft Office and Windows.

Summary

When doing complex calculations with large amounts of data, Excel users often experience problems with Excel not responding to saving their work. In this post, we have tried to explain how to back up your work and avoid Excel failing. Hopefully the problem can be solved by trying each of these techniques separately. If you have lost data, it is important to install MyRecoverto recover lost files.