Excel spreadsheet problem

[dsprik]

I have an HP laptop running Windows XP (SP2) and Office 2007. AMD processor. 1.6 Ghz. 640 mg RAM.

I have never had problems with my excel sheets on speed before. But now I have created a budget spreadsheet with over 1200 rows - not that big I didn't think - and suddenly I am having all sorts of problems with the spreadsheet slowing WAY down, my virtual memory trying to expand and finally having to re-boot the latop as it becomes virtually unresponsive. My smaller files still work at normal speed.

I have tried shutting down all other programs and changing as many of formulas to "values only" as possible. I even hid some rows and changed many colors in the cells to plain white. Only very minor difference in speed and eventually have to restart again.

What do I have to do to keep this relatively small - in my opinion - file from totally bogging down my computer? I have a couple of macros that I have also deleted - keeping only 2. Do I need to buy more ram? How do I increase the application memory size? I could do this on my Mac. Still in a learning curve on Windows...

I appreciate any help and ideas.

Dave

*On Edit~ As a side note, my 2007 Outlook program is also a little sluggish. This program has always been this way though on my laptop, but it might also be an application memory or RAM problem.