Turning on Placeholders

Summary: A large number of graphics in a worksheet can slow down Excel. One way to compensate is to turn on picture placeholders, an easy setting that displays placeholders instead of the actual graphics. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, and Excel 2003.)

If you are working with a large worksheet that has a large number of graphics, you may have noticed that Excel slows down quite a bit when displaying the graphics. This can be particularly distracting, especially if your graphics are quite detailed or are being loaded across a busy network connection.

You can speed up the display of your worksheet by using placeholders. This results in Excel displaying boxes where your graphics would normally appear. This means that Excel does not have to redisplay the complete graphic, and therefore your display will be much faster. To turn on placeholders, follow these steps:

Choose Options from the Tools menu. You will see the Options dialog box.
Click on the View tab. (Click here to see a related figure.)
Use the Show Placeholders check box to control whether placeholders are used by Excel. Click on the check box to turn the capability on and off; a check in the box means placeholders are enabled.
Click on OK.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2942) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

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Turning on Placeholders