MBP slow opening Excel file

[AFPoster]

Any ideas why my Macs (2012 MBAir 13", 2011 high-end 15" MBP) take more than 25 minutes to open a 19mb excel file? After 1mb of any excel file it's 5 min or more to open.

I've taken both Mac's to Apple and they have no clue, even when I used the new rMBP at the store it took forever. Is this a Microsoft issue or can I change a setting?

 

[maflynn]

That's a huge spreadsheet and it appears to be related to Excel's performance. If other Macs are exhibiting that phenomenon then its not apple's fault, but the application and in this case that's excel.

 

[AirThis]

I suggest that you take a look at Activity monitor and check for page-outs whilst loading the data. If you have a lot of them, it probably means that you need more RAM.

In another thread, someone noticed that his rMBP was showing lag while entering data on a 10Mb spreadsheet. So, for fun, I created a 17 million cell spreadsheet by importing a database which I have in my lab. The resulting Excel file is about 60 Mb in size. It takes about 10-15 seconds to save it, and roughly 35 seconds to load it. Don't ask me why it takes longer to load than to save.

Edit: forgot to mention: make sure you have latest Excel updates. I'm running version 14.2.5 of Excel 2011 here.

 

[AFPoster]

I suggest that you take a look at Activity monitor and check for page-outs whilst loading the data. If you have a lot of them, it probably means that you need more RAM.

In another thread, someone noticed that his rMBP was showing lag while entering data on a 10Mb spreadsheet. So, for fun, I created a 17 million cell spreadsheet by importing a database which I have in my lab. The resulting Excel file is about 60 Mb in size. It takes about 10-15 seconds to save it, and roughly 35 seconds to load it. Don't ask me why it takes longer to load than to save.

Edit: forgot to mention: make sure you have latest Excel updates. I'm running version 14.2.5 of Excel 2011 here.

I have 8gb of ram 1600mhz to answer the first question. The Mac's at Apple I tested on had 4gb, still the same length in time to open.

In Activity Monitor it just says "Microsoft Excel - Not Responding" for the 15-20 minutes then it opens. Running current version "14.2.5"

I also performed the Purge command to free up memory thinking that would help, no luck =/.

Also as a side note on my PC it takes 30-45 seconds to open this same document.

 

[AirThis]

I have 8gb of ram 1600mhz to answer the first question. The Mac's at Apple I tested on had 4gb, still the same length in time to open.

In Activity Monitor it just says "Microsoft Excel - Not Responding" for the 15-20 minutes then it opens. Running current version "14.2.5"

I also performed the Purge command to free up memory thinking that would help, no luck =/.

Also as a side note on my PC it takes 30-45 seconds to open this same document.

Try saving a copy of your file as CSV to see what happens. You'll lose some formatting, but it might help anyway if you're only interested in the data.

 

[AFPoster]

Try saving a copy of your file as CSV to see what happens. You'll lose some formatting, but it might help anyway if you're only interested in the data.

The only problem with saving as a .csv is I have to open it first. This file is a data export from my system which is in .xls. I'll see what I can do tho and if that helps.