calc turn off Adapt Row height

Using the latest version of libre office on a .xls sheet in Windows 10

I did something, and now every time I move up or down a row there is a delay for ‘Adapt Row Height’
It slows the whole thing down enough to make the thing unuseable.
I have seen one or two suggested solutions but nothing which has worked for me.

I have been using spreadsheets since Borland Quattro - but this has me beat.

Might be tdf#124098.

(All my city-maps, many of them being 20 years old, have a printed “Newest Version” on their covers.)
Please name your version of LibO.

I had the same “adapt row height” problem; the spreadsheet was so slow that it became unresponsive.
I found a solution for limiting how many columns are displayed on a spreadsheet. (I can’t find it again to share it.) This worked for me, for both rows and columns.

  1. Decide how many rows you want for your spreadsheet.

  2. Go to the next row (for example if you want 200 rows, go to row 201)

  3. Hold CTRL + Shift + down arrow to highlight the remaining rows.

  4. Right-click > delete rows

(The solution I read directed to hide columns, rather than delete them)

I did the same with columns, and saved the smaller spreadsheet as a template.

I eventually opened a new file, and copied everything across into it. The new file behaved properly, and off I go.

I am not at all sure this is how it is supposed to work, and I would still want to avoid it if possible.


Just pasted some stuff in from a .csv sheet - the problem returned, so still no solution.

What am I doing wrong? Genuinely, this is making the program unuseable.


Thank you.
I went to the answer suggested, and agree that it might be a similar problem, but the problem arises on every move from one row to the next.

I tried the fix suggested but it did not work. I have also searched in the on-line manual with no indication returned.

Also this is happening:
not (noticeably) on loading, but on editing.
It seems to come and go - the only common factor seems to be on setting a font for the entire sheet.

I am using build Version: 6.3.3.2 (x64).

UPDATE 2: I have realized that the “adapt cell height” message appears EVERY time I make any selection in any spreadsheet in LO. It becomes a problem when it appears long enough to notice, or more importantly, long enough to notice an impact on performance. I didn’t notice it at all until my spreadsheet got larger, then it was impossible not to notice when I multiplied the formats in a cell. So, my original “solution,” if that’s what it is, stands, as making the described change makes the appearance of the notice very brief. Again, apologies.

UPDATE: The “adapt cell height” issue has reappeared. And I still have the formatting issue as well. Sorry all.

I was having a similar issue. (I hope “was.”) In my case, I was seeing the “adapt row height” indication, but not experiencing a noticeable impact on performance. I tried undoing changes I had made and I believe I have traced it to the use of different formats inside of a single cell. I had used “bold” text on only a portion of the text in a cell and left other text in the same cell at defaults. I reformatted the cells in question to a single format for the entire cell and the “adapt row height” that was displayed has not returned.
I have used multiple formats per cell in previous versions (way previous versions) of LO without issue. I hope this feature can be repaired.
FYI, I am working in an .ods spreadsheet in calc that I originally opened from a .wks (MS Works 2000) spreadsheet.
ADDITIONAL: At about the same time I found I could no longer apply formatting to multiple cells after selection. I must select single cells and format them one at a time. I have not solved that yet. I have not tested this in other files yet. Will do so and probably post separately as a question.

I agree that after copying only this used range to a new spreadsheet, the program runs at usable speed.

Here is my proposed a reason for it:

My spreadsheet was originally an XLSX, resaved as ODS. On loading in LO Calc (6.4, x64) the program reported possible data loss: “… the maximum number of columns per sheet was exceeded”. I ignored this because only columns A to P contained data, not the 1024 that is the limit of Calc. However, Calc is clearly reformatting far more data cells than necessary every time the cursor is moved.

There is a technical discussion of misunderstandings between Excel and Calc over columns here > fix for `maximum number of columns per sheet was exceeded` in LibreOffice. by bnowak · Pull Request #1289 · PHPOffice/PhpSpreadsheet · GitHub

A quicker fix than creating a new sheet might be to cut and paste only the required range within the original sheet.

1 Like