Performance of the filters in OnlyOffice Desktop Editors

Desktop editors
1

[Bug Report]
On an XLSX file with 800 rows and around twenty columns, when trying to use a column filter, you check a value you want to filter by, and the result takes about 10 seconds to display. It’s very slow.

OS version: Windows11
App version: 9.2.1.43
Downloaded from: ONLYOFFICE website

2

Small clarification:
this is a native file created with Microsoft Office Excel. When I copy and paste the data into OnlyOffice Desktop Editors and set up new filters, everything works perfectly.

3

The filtering that is very slow on these columns involves an Excel file with references to other worksheets within the same file.

4

Hello,

Following my initial report, I performed a more detailed analysis of the affected file in order to better understand the performance issues observed in OnlyOffice.

Workbook analysis

  • Approximately 15,600 formulas in the Analysis worksheet
  • Heavy use of cross-worksheet formulas, mainly:
    • SOMME.SI
    • RECHERCHEV
  • Many formulas use full-column references (A:A, F:F, etc.)
  • Source worksheets contain tens or hundreds of thousands of rows

Representative formula example

=SOMME.SI('Appels2023-2024-Phoneis'!A:A, Analysis!B4, 'Appels2023-2024-Phoneis'!F:F)

Theoretical impact

A single formula of this type requires:

  • iterating over 1,048,576 rows for each referenced column
  • full evaluation on each recalculation

Multiplied by approximately 15,600 formulas, this represents a very large computation workload.

Observed behavior in OnlyOffice

  • Full workbook recalculation at file opening
  • User interface becomes largely unresponsive during recalculation
  • High CPU usage
  • Extremely slow filtering and worksheet navigation

Comparison with Microsoft Excel

  • Fast file opening
  • Smooth recalculation
  • No noticeable performance issues during filtering or navigation

This suggests that Excel:

  • optimizes full-column references internally
  • limits recalculation to actually used ranges
  • relies on caching and incremental calculation mechanisms

Open questions

  • Is full recalculation at file opening expected behavior in OnlyOffice?
  • Are there known limitations or recommended practices regarding:
    • SOMME.SI / SOMME.SI.ENS usage
    • full-column references
    • workbooks with a large number of cross-worksheet formulas?
  • Are there plans for calculation engine optimizations such as differential recalculation or result caching?

Thank you in advance for your feedback and guidance.

5

Hello @adrien.nivert

Yes, it is expected.

No, there are not. Depending on the content, certain optimizations could be made.

We are always improving the engine, but for particular cases an analysis is required. Is it possible to share the file to run some tests?