WFH issues especially Excel, getting desperate

[RandomMess]

When I WFH it's frankly crap especially with Excel. Struggle to highlight cells even, moving emails between folders etc etc. It's at the point I can't really WFH as its so slow and frustrating.

IT support at work are stumped/clueless.

Could it just be my internet isn't fast enough and I need to upgrade to ultra - I am so reluctant to do this if that isn't the problem.

At work everything is saved on ShitPoint - sorry SharePoint and I honestly think that could be part of the issue as it's constantly having to communicate with the network. We have HP Elitebooks, also possibly a bit shit? At home I even use an ethernet cable.

Of course DH has none of these issues, he works elsewhere and not based on Shit Point and relies on the Wifi.

Desperate plea for help here. TIA

20 download is really slow! Check if you can upgrade, go on comparison sites to see what speed is possible, it's not going to be much if anything more... if you are in contract then log in or call your provider and tell them you're looking for faster if possible. I pay £27 a month for my internet, get 60 download which isn't the best these days but I've never had issues with WFH and got a £100 amazon card for switching recently. Obviously raise the share point issue with IT again and double check the size of file you're working on.

In this day and age, 20mb while not terrible isn't great. If you're using the same laptop at work without issues, then it does sound like your internet connection is at fault.

@Justlurking101 yes we can get it will be an extra £15 per month from memory.

Considering when I first WFH and we used file explorer and all was fine it's so bloody frustrating. I do think it's because SP is constantly trying to connect in the background.

@Twynklebell I do sometimes have the issues at work.

What speeds do you have, and what are you paying for? If it's a lot less, than the provider must provide a fix. We had an issue with VM before, our speeds were much less than we were paying for. We kicked up.a huge fuss and they came around and installed something different and gave us 6 months of free WiFi, and kept the price of the cheaper package!

Excel and ppt do not work well on share point with multiple people in them.

Fair enough was checking the situation. In that case I would use the wfh as a reasonable adjustment for your disability and so they'll have to put more effort into helping you find a solution

Your post says youre desperate, are you going to upgrade your broadband? 60 download fibre is on offer with many providers for less than £30 a month. Deals change all the time and whatever you were previously offered won't be valid anymore. Loads of offers just now. If you're on copper connection you will struggle with speed a lot more than fibre connections, both fibre to the cab or superfast fibre to the home will be worlds apart from old copper line.

Off the top of my head ...

Am I correct in understanding that there are 2 users simultaneously using the network.

Over WiFi ?

That's would suggest a crap router. Almost certainly if you are using an ISP supplied one with the default setup.

Also Citrix can be very sniffy about speeds. My last place in 2016 refused to support WFH if you couldn't provide 100Mb/s. Meant a lot of people in the sticks had problems.

What do your IT department see when you are connected ? What are their diagnostic insights ?

Also what are you running ? Windows 10. Windows 11. MacOS ?

Can you test you speeds with and without your Citrix connection ?

I have similar problems with giant Excel sheets, especially if they are linked together. Upgrading to Office 365 or whatever the latest one is has made it completely unusable. We don't even have the Sharepoint element compounding it, my laptop just can't seem to cope with anything in my house.

One of the things IT told me right at the beginning of covid was check upload speeds - broadband providers shout about download speeds but if your laptop is constantly checking back in with the network it's the upload speed that will be causing issues.

DH works here fine which as far as I'm concerned means it cannot be my Internet.

Sorry, I don't have any advice, I very rarely wfh because it's quicker to drive the 6 miles to work - I easily make up those 20 minutes not waiting for files to load.

Personally all ISPs are much of a muchness (generally poor). Especially with contract lock ins and the like. Ideally I'd like to see the speeds (plus latency) first.

Quite a few domestic circuits have a high contention ratio. The devil will be in the small print.

Also the up/down speed could be well out of whack. No use having a 100Mb/s download if you're only running 5MB/s upload. Generally commercial use connections are symmetrical ... 100/100 or 300/300 and so on.

Oh, and as a final thought ... if you have an IT department then what are their recommended/required specs. They will of course have them (she writes knowing how many she has dealt with haven't...)

Does your company not use Teams?
I work with huge excel files. All of our files are saved on Teams. I open them in the app and pin them onto my task bar.

The other option is to download them on to your desktop and work on them off line

That might have been just about feasible ten years ago but with the way systems are architected these days it's largely pointless. You'd have to have an extremely limited set of supported applications and a user base who pretty much all do the same thing to be able to confidently state minimum bandwidth and maximum RTT requirements.

That's why it was my last, not first thought.

The other option is to download them on to your desktop and work on them off line

If other people may also be working on the same files that needs some sort of source control type system - either lock it while one person has it checked out, or else have a merging capability. I'd imagine that might be difficult on a huge excel spreadsheet.... she's right it sounds like they're using one as a poor substitute for a database.

That's why we use Teams. I work on several shared large excel files and have no issues with them.

@RandomMess you haven't said who your provider is. Some providers work better than others in certain areas.

We have sky during lockdown university student DS came home and struggled. SKY came out gave us a new router which was old. Put a booster in the office which made a big difference. Checked the line into the house, replaced the box. I think the booster probably made the biggest difference.

I use SharePoint, excel etc and WFH and mine is fine. Sounds like your internet.

I think you need faster internet. I also work wired, not WiFi. It helps.

we have a horrible time when multiple people are working on shared documents on teams. I’ve only got one speadsheet on share point and only 2 of us are allowed editing access and we do sometimes have problems.

Yeah that's rubbish! We get 90 download speed according to my DH who I've just asked 🤣

It's your work servers. I had a similar problem. Work blamed my home internet but I also had issues in the office as did others. Changed job (different company) and now everything is super fast. It was work rubbish IT systems. (nb not everyone had the IT issue - it was dependent on your ISP apparently).

If you're throwing large Excel files then 20 down / 5 up is too slow. If you can bump that up to, say, 50 down / 15 up it'll likely solve most of your problems.

If your phone supports 5G and you're close enough to a mast to get 50+Mbps then it might be worth trying to hotspot off of your phone as a test to see if things get noticeably better.

I used to have this on excel - 40 seconds to add a filter and a new laptop fixed it. IT couldn’t see exactly what was making it happen but I tested a new machine and it was absolutely fine.

@RandomMess
Blimey Random you sweetie, you have a better memory than me! ❤️