Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Nov 18, 2017

Excel Limits

Hi Excel experts, Firstly let me say that Excel is an amazing product that I use every day of my working life. However, because I use it so heavily I do run into limits, which I guess are more re...

excel

Haytham Amairah

Silver Contributor

Nov 18, 2017

Hi Marcus,

I think that your computer is strong enough to handle these workbooks that you have!

Make sure that the software is upgraded!

Someone like you needs to:

64-Bit version of Windows 10 with the latest update.
64-bit version of Excel 2016 with the latest update.

NOTE: Windows 10 presents huge improvements in terms of RAM management and consumption, and Excel 2016 as well.

If that doesn't work, you can go ahead and upgrade your computer!

Useful Links:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Excel-specifications-and-limits-1672b34d-7043-467e-8e27-269d656771c3

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vba/excel-vba/articles/excel-performance-and-limit-improvements

Marcus Hyde
Copper Contributor
Nov 30, 2017
Hi Haytham,

Thanks for taking the time to reply, I appreciate it.

I decided to test your advice and upgraded to Excel 2016 (from 2010 64-bit).

Horrendous! What are Microsoft thinking! There's so much wasted space on the top and bottom bars, that it's like looking at my charts through a letter box.

I can see that they're trying to make Excel tablet friendly, but at the expense of heavy desktop users. You would have thought they'd be able to give you a button for Desktop/Tablet view.

In terms of performance; 2016 was slightly slower to open Workbooks and definitely less stable with flashing white pages. In terms of Refresh/Recalculate times, it was about the same as 2010 (64-bit).

Finally, I had a whole bunch of issues 'Exiting' Excel. It frequently refused to exit and I had to force quit.

All around horrible. It lasted 24 hours before it was uninstalled.

Thanks anyway.

Marcus