I'm having a problem where whenever I change a particular cell in a relatively complex spreadsheet I built, Excel crashes. The cell is a trigger cell that changes a list of assumptions to calculate a particular scenario. The spreadsheet was working fine and then, all of sudden, this problem arose. I had this same problem about 3 weeks ago and ended up copying individual tabs into a new spreadsheet and globally replacing the links so it was working. That worked okay until this most recent incident. The stranger thing is it seems I can open the spreadsheet using Excel for Windows and it doesn't crash. If anyone has any thoughts, I'd appreciate it.
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Excel for Mac 2008 Crashing
- Thread starter bmk820
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I'm running Snow Leopard with Office for Mac 2008. On the Windows machine, I use XP and Office 2003. I spent a long time on the phone with the Office for Mac Technical people. They were actually pleasant to deal with (because I bought the product recently, I guess you get a certain number of free incidents to deal with the Tech Support people and so I may have gotten into a better group than if I had just called without having the free incidents. They didn't have any real solutions (there are no macros or visual basic in the spreadsheet). They suspect it is a complexity issue and the Mac Excel architecture doesn't handle it as well as the Windows version.
I'm running Snow Leopard with Office for Mac 2008. On the Windows machine, I use XP and Office 2003. I spent a long time on the phone with the Office for Mac Technical people. They were actually pleasant to deal with (because I bought the product recently, I guess you get a certain number of free incidents to deal with the Tech Support people and so I may have gotten into a better group than if I had just called without having the free incidents. They didn't have any real solutions (there are no macros or visual basic in the spreadsheet). They suspect it is a complexity issue and the Mac Excel architecture doesn't handle it as well as the Windows version.
Further Update
I tried taking some complexity out of the spreadsheet and now seems to work okay on both the PC and Mac. I eliminated several choose functions that were tied to the trigger cell I was having trouble with. I still am perplexed at how I could overwhelm Excel with a 5mb spreadsheet. I'm still interested in people's suggestions and thoughts since I suspect I may need to add some complexity back in.
I tried taking some complexity out of the spreadsheet and now seems to work okay on both the PC and Mac. I eliminated several choose functions that were tied to the trigger cell I was having trouble with. I still am perplexed at how I could overwhelm Excel with a 5mb spreadsheet. I'm still interested in people's suggestions and thoughts since I suspect I may need to add some complexity back in.
If you can send me (us) the original file that caused the crashes, along with specific steps to reproduce the problem, we can probably identify the problem.
Schwieb
MacBU Dev Lead
http://www.schwieb.com/blog
I had sent the spreadsheet to the Office for Mac support people and they found regardless of the operating system (Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard) the same thing happened. They chalked it up to a different calculation mechanism within Office for Mac vs. Office on XP due in part to the way OSX works vs. XP. Now that I have taken some complexity out, it seems to be working. If you think you can more specifically isolate the issue or if it will help for future development of Office for Mac (or OSX) let me know and I can probably send you a version that crashes my Excel.
Unlike the folks in product support, I and my team are the actual code developers on the product -- we can open your file with Excel under the debugger and see exactly what is causing the crash.
My team doesn't work on Excel itself, but the Mac Excel developers are just down the hall from me...Schwieb
MacBU Development Lead
Thank you Schwieb
Thank you Schwieb. Please let me know your email address so I can send you a version of file that causes my Excel to crash. I recently switched to Mac and would welcome any improvements to the software that make it more robust.
Thank you Schwieb. Please let me know your email address so I can send you a version of file that causes my Excel to crash. I recently switched to Mac and would welcome any improvements to the software that make it more robust.
Drop me a line on the contact page of my blog (http://www.schwieb.com/blog/contact-me/) with your name and address and I'll reply privately. I prefer not to put my email addr in public forums...
Schwieb