When you open a workbook in Excel 2003 that was created in Excel 2000 or earlier, the program may appear to stop responding

When you try to open a workbook in Microsoft Office Excel 2003 that you created in Microsoft Excel 2000 or earlier, the program may appear to stop responding and the workbook may not open.

This problem occurs because Excel 2003 uses a different method to construct the calculation chain when it first opens a workbook than the method that is used in Excel 2000 or earlier. In Excel 2003, the initial recalculation of the workbook may be prohibitively long, and it may cause Excel 2003 to appear to stop responding.

This problem was first fixed in a hotfix that is now contained in a service pack. If you installed the latest Office 2003 service pack, you do not have to install the hotfix.

Service pack information

This problem is corrected in Office 2003 Service Pack 2.

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Office 2003. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

After you install the service pack, follow the steps that are listed in the "More Information" section of this article to set the QFE_SmarterChainLoad registry key and to activate the hotfix.

Hotfix information

How to obtain the hotfix

This issue is fixed in the Excel 2003 post-Service Pack 1 Hotfix Package that is dated August 20, 2004. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: After you install this hotfix, follow the steps that are listed in the "More Information" section of this article to set the QFE_SmarterChainLoad registry key and to activate the hotfix.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section. This problem was first corrected in Office 2003 Service Pack 2.

Warning If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

To activate this hotfix, follow these steps:

1. Quit Excel 2003.
2. Click Start, and then click Run.
3. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
4. Locate and then click to select the following registry subkey:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Options
5. After you select the subkey that is specified in step 4, point to New on the Edit menu, and then click DWORD Value.
6. Type QFE_SmarterChainLoad, and then press ENTER.
7. Right-click QFE_SmarterChainLoad, and then click Modify.
8. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
   
   Note After you use the QFE_SmarterChainLoad registry subkey to correct a workbook, change the QFE_SmarterChainLoad subkey Value data to 0. For additional information about this procedure, see the "Additional notes" section.
9. On the File menu, click Exit to quit Registry Editor.

Additional notes

• By default, Excel 2003 chains the formulas (calculation chains) together that are contained in your workbook alphabetically much like the way that Excel stores worksheets.
• In step 8 of the previous procedure, if you set the QFE_SmarterChainLoad subkey to 1, Excel 2003 will construct the calculation chain together from the worksheet with the largest-used calculation chain range to the worksheet with the smallest-used calculation chain range.
• In step 8 of the previous procedure, if you set the QFE_SmarterChainLoad subkey to 2, Excel will construct the calculation chain together from the worksheet with the most formulas to the worksheet with the least formulas.
• In step 8 of the previous procedure, if you set the Value data to1 for the QFE_SmarterChainLoad subkey, and then try to open the workbook, change the Value data to 2 if you experiences the problem that is described in the "Symptoms" section.
• If the workbook is modified and then saved again in an earlier version of Microsoft Excel, you may have to reactivate the hotfix and then reopen the workbook.
• Important After you have resolved the problem, change the Value data of the QFE_SmarterChainLoad subkey to 0.