Excel freezes when displaying graphics on a 4K-monitor

Copper Contributor

I have an issue with Excel (Office16) on Windows 11 when connected to a monitor with 4K-resolution. Here is one way to reproduce the issue:

1. Start a new document

2. In column A, create a series of some 100 data points, e.g. numbers 1 to 100

3. Select the data series and insert a 2D line chart showing the data series

4. Go down to the bottom of the series, i.e. cell A100

5. Press CTRL+Home to go back to the top.

Now, the chart will not be seen. All my 16 GB RAM will be occupied. My harddisk will start caching tens of GBs of data. I will need to kill Excel from the Task Manager. This has been reproduced on two identical laptops with AMD Ryzen Pro 7 CPU, and one Intel-based laptop. The problem only occurs when an external monitor is connected, and the resolution is set to 4K.

 

Another way to create the same rush in memory is the following:

1. Start a new Excel document

2. Insert the beating heart from Insert / 3D models / All Animated Models

3. Scroll down in the document to make the graphics go out of the screen

4. Scroll back to the top 

Now the same memory rush will start. I can insert the same 3D model in Word and PowerPoint without any issues. The problem must be related to Excel.

 

How do I get this information to Microsoft without starting paid support?

13 Replies

@claesafk 

 

I just want to also add that I have the exact same issue, and this is particularly recent as I used Excel on 4k monitors for a couple years. I find it difficult to replicate, but it happens most often when switching tabs on Excel. I have spent the last week trying to pinpoint the issue. I have done the following:

 

  • Uninstall and reinstall
  • O365 “Repair Installation” - Online mode
  • Safe mode
  • Fully re-built the registry for Excel

 

I have a 16 core CPU, 64 GB of RAM, and a 3080 GPU. It's almost funny to see Excel chew through 64 GB of RAM to change tabs.

 

If I change my screen to 1080p, it performs infinitely better, and I have not seen the visual glitching. Given this, it seems like it's a 4k focused glitch, which led me here.

@aforatmosphere: Can you reproduce the issue in any of the ways I describe above?
I'm not exactly able to reproduce the problem the way you describe. I have yet to find a common way in which to reproduce it, but it most often happens when switching tabs.

I finally found a way to fix it for myself without moving to 1080p, which is to roll back the Geforce driver to 512.65 from 516.59. This mostly resolved my problems, and I found someone else with the same problem on NVidia's forums (https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/496299/geforce-grd-51659-feedback-...). If you don't have an Nvidia graphics card, we probably have separate problems.

@tomoam2: Thank you for the suggestion. My problem was eventually solved by MS support. The solution was to switch to a long time stable version of Office365. Since then, the problem is gone. Hopefully, the problem was solved also on the standard track of O365 by now. 

@claesafk What version of office did they downgrade you to?  We are having very similar issues and I would like to try this version on our affected computers.

@thomasjonesjr I am not sure that I was "downgraded". I was directed to another release-branch of the Office Suite, the "monthly enterprise channel". Here is the resolution as it was presented to me:

 

Issue Description

============

Excel stops responding on win11

 

Cause

===========

Version issue

 

Resolution

===========

The issue has been resolved after installing the monthly enterprise channel,

  • Double click the downloaded exe and extract it to one local folder (e.g. D:\WorkSpace\ODT)

claesafk_0-1679581247298.jpeg

 

  • Run CMD windows as admin and run CD command for navigating to the ODT folder

claesafk_1-1679581247300.jpeg

 

  • Save the attached content as configuration file ConfigurationOffice365X64.xml to the ODT folder, 

claesafk_2-1679581247302.png

 

  • Run command “setup.exe /configure ConfigurationOffice365X64.xml

claesafk_3-1679581247306.png

 

@claesafk Thank you for the response.  Can you post the contents of that attached file they reference?  Thank you.

@thomasjonesjr- Here is the contents of the file:

 

<!-- Office 365 client configuration file sample. To be used for Office 365 ProPlus apps,
Office 365 Business apps, Project Pro for Office 365 and Visio Pro for Office 365.

For detailed information regarding configuration options visit: http://aka.ms/ODT.
To use the configuration file be sure to remove the comments

The following sample allows you to download and install the 64 bit version of the Office 365 ProPlus apps
and Visio Pro for Office 365 directly from the Office CDN using the Current Channel
settings -->

<Configuration>
<Add OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="MonthlyEnterprise" Version="16.0.15128.20280">
<Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
<Language ID="en-us" />
<ExcludeApp ID="Groove" />
<ExcludeApp ID="Lync" />
</Product>
</Add>
<RemoveMSI />
<Updates Enabled="FALSE" />
</Configuration>

@claesafk thank you very much. That version was released June of 22'. I appreciate it.
@thomasjonesjr: Today, I tested to edit the XML-file and change the version to the latest, Version="16.0.16026.20238". No issues with freezing afterwards.
You will also need to manually update Office. I found the release notes here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/monthly-enterprise-channel
The latest release is currently version 2301, build 16026.20238.
For those of you still facing this problem, here is what helped me:

(For Win 10)
Go to Settings > System > Display > Select the relevant monitor > Advanced Scaling Settings > Switch "Let Windows try to fix apps so they're not blurry" to ON

This fixed all my issues, but with one caveat - the default cell sizes changed from 20x64 pixels to 29x96. However, I'd rather deal with resizing every time than not being able to work on the program. Hope this helps :)