The categorizing service is shared by all users and paced to stay within the limits of the AI provider. A run with thousands of rows that need the AI therefore takes minutes, and longer when many people are sorting at the same time. The pane shows how long it expects the rest to take.
What the pane tells you #
- “About {m} minutes left at the current speed.” An estimate based on the speed so far. It changes as the pace of the service changes.
- “Busy right now. Continuing in {s} seconds.” The service is at its limit. The add-in waits and continues by itself; you do not need to do anything, and nothing is charged for the waiting.
- “The categorizing service is not reachable. Your results so far are saved. Try again in a few minutes.” The run stopped because the service could not be reached. Every finished row is kept. Run again later and the add-in continues with the rows that have no result yet.
What helps #
- Repeated rows, blank rows and rows with a result are free and never wait. Only the rest goes to the AI, so the estimate before the run tells you how many rows really have to wait.
- Start reviewing early. Results are written as they arrive.
- Keep Excel and the task pane open until the run is done. If you have to stop, Cancel keeps the finished rows and the next run picks up the rest.
- Run the big list at a quieter time if the pane keeps showing Busy.
When to contact support #
If the pane shows no progress at all for several minutes without a Busy message, or says the service is not reachable for more than an hour, contact support and include the diagnostic info from About in the menu (top left).