Greetings fabulous forum!

I have joined today because I cannot solve a freeze/slowdown issue. I have Office Pro Plus 2010 and an HP intel core i7 - 2600 CPU @ 3.40 Ghz. 4.00G Ram on a 64 bit operating system. Windows 7 professional (service pack 1).

So, I use conditional formatting regularly. On this machine, everytime I click on "manage rules" or "new rule" then a sub category, the program grinds to a halt. I cannot click anywhere. Sometimes after 30-45 seconds the next selection appears, other times not. If I then procede (enter a formula, select 'exactly', 'between', etc.) it freezes again. There seems to be no rhyme, reason or pattern to it.

Here's an oddity...
I was trying to conditionally format once and the freeze happened. Instead of staring at the screen waiting for the hiccup to pass I opened a word document. I saw the cursor start blinking in the excel cf window (duel monitor) so I clicked and began entering info. It froze again. I went back to word, close that document and excel unfroze. I typed until it froze again, then opened Word again. The long-and-short-of-it I kept opening and closing Word making incremental steps in completing the conditional formating information. After that, I hit OK and the formatting was applied. The spreadsheet itself has no hiccups or freezes.

I hope that explains it.

I have also opened a blank woksheet after a reboot selected a handful of cells and went to conditional formatting. It still froze.