Excel ran out of resources while attempting to calculate one or more formulas.

[LukeFM]

Excel ran out of resources while attempting to calculate one or more formulas. As a result, these formulas cannot be evaluated.

Hi Everyone,

I'm getting the above error message when opening or doing any sort of calculation on any file (even opening a blank file and typing in =2+2).

Steps I have taken:

1. Restart PC

2. Reinstall Excel/Office

3. Turned off multi-threading in Options / Advanced / Formulas

4. Gone down to 1 processor in Options / Advanced / Formulas

A support agent from Microsoft also spent about half an hour playing around remotely, seemed to do the tests above and a few others which I can't recall but wasn't able to resolve. They sent me here.

Files which have the issue on my laptop, I've emailed to another PC and they're working fine. Laptop I'm using has an i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz 1.69 GHz 8.00GB RAM

Any suggestions?

Many thanks

Luke

[#2]

@LukeFM 

Since this happens in any workbook: do you have any add-ins installed? If so, try disabling all of them in File > Options > Add-ins. If the problem goes away, one of the add-ins must be the culprit. By enabling them one by one and testing after each step you should be able to find the culprit.

Something else to try:

Make sure Excel is not active.

Hold down the left Ctrl key while you start Excel. You should see a dialog asking whether you want to start Excel in Safe Mode. Answer Yes.

Does the problem persist?

(All your personal settings will be missing, but don't worry. They'll be back the next time you start Excel the normal way.)

[#3]

@Hans Vogelaar thanks for the response, really appreciate it!

I believe all Add-ins are already disabled - all the boxes are unticked when I go to manage on the Add-ins screen.

Safe mode didn't work either :(

Any other ideas...?

[#4]

@LukeFM 

In Windows Explorer / File Explorer, type the following in the address bar, then press Enter:

%appdata%\Microsoft\Excel

You should see a file named Excel15.xlb

Make sure that Excel is not active, and rename this file to Excel15.old

Then start Excel to see if the problem is gone.

If it remains, you can quit Excel and rename the file back to Excel15.xlb

[#5]

I did that, no luck. Have now renamed it back to Excel15.xlb.

Thanks again for your help, if you have any other suggestions then I'm all ears!

[#6]

@LukeFM 

I am really sorry, but I'm out of ideas...

[#7]

No worries. Appreciate your efforts!

I think I have found something of a workaround - if I turn calculations to manual, I can at least work without the dialog box popping up every time I hit enter / leave a cell. Would I be correct in saying that I can do this, then occasionally turn it back on to automatic, and when I hit enter on a formula again the whole workbook will update as if nothing was wrong?

Btw I've already error-checked all the formulae within the workbook and there are no circular references.

[#8]

@LukeFM 

You can try that, and see if the error message pops up when you enable calculations.

[#9 · Accepted solution]

@LukeFM 

Hi, 
This issue looks like the Bug for Excel 2016 version 2210 (Build 15726.20174).
So revert to Version 2209 (Build 15629.20208) and disable Office updates.

1. Start an Office application (such as Excel), and then select File > Account. select Update Options > Disable Updates.
2. Type cmd on the start menu, right click on the Command Prompt, choose Run as Administrator
3. Copy/paste these two commands one at a time and press enter
cd %programfiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun
officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.15629.20208

FYI:

Update history for Office 2016 C2R and Office 2019 
How to revert to an earlier version of Office

--------------------------------------------------

*If you use MSI versions of Office, delete windows update program.

[#10]

This seems to have fixed it :)

Thank you very much!!!

[#11]

@LukeFM Reverting Excel absolutely worked. @Pernille-Eskebo please fix as I have lots of macros which place complex formulas, and this messes me up big time. Also, FYI, my build was a later build than the one mentioned before reversion.

[#12]

@makapu  wrote:  ``looks like the Bug for Excel 2016 version 2210 (Build 15726.20174).
So revert to Version 2209 (Build 15629.20208)``

@nic-fleetwood  wrote (Dec 3):  ``Reverting Excel absolutely worked. [....] FYI, my build was a later build than the one mentioned before reversion``

This is good to know. 

According to the cited update history, version ``2209 (Build 15629.20208)`` was released on 11 Oct 2022.

Any idea if this also affects Office 365 Excel on or about the same date?  Excel 2019?  Mac versions?

We have seen this complaint often in other forums, and not just for Excel 2016, IIRC  We waste a lot of time trying to suss out details about the workbook, like excessive whole-column references in SUMPRODUCT formulas, etc.

@makapu's response is a keeper.

[#13]

This problem may occur in the updated version of Excel. In this case, I suggest that you can click feedback in the Excel application to directly report this problem to the relevant Excel teams, which can quickly make the comments attract the attention of developers.

You can open Excel and click File>Feedback>click I have a suggestion and write this query to feedback it to the Excel team.

How do I give feedback on Microsoft 365? - Microsoft Support

[#14]

I am running Version 2211 Build 16.0.15831.20098 and have the same issue.@makapu 

It's not with every file however.

[#15]

@ShelliRenee 

I am running Version 2211 Build 16.0.15831.20208, did you find any solutions?

[#16]

@makapu 

I have Excel version 2212 (Build 15928.20216 Click-to-Run)  and today I started getting this error message.  Will the fix mentioned in this tread work with this or should I be doing something else.

I have Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2021

I just got this and just started using this version as I have a new laptop.  I have never run into this problem before and I have been using excel for awhile.

[#17]

Is this still not fixed yet? I still have updates turned off just in case. It's tax season and I'm going to need Excel working perfectly...

[#18]

Thank you @makapu! I followed these steps and this seems to have fixed the issue for me. This only occurs in one workbook I had saved to Sharepoint so others could have access and it happens to have 4 LAMBDAs, each with ~2000 characters of code.

Microsoft, please fix!

[#19]

@nic-fleetwood 

I contacted Microsoft as I had just purchased the product.  Some how my copy became corrupted.  Fortunately, I had an older copy of the sheet I was using so I didn't lose the data.   They tried to fix it but were not successful.   They did get the overall problem of that error message to go away in my other sheets and now it is working fine.  Sorry, not a tech person and I don't know what all they had to do to fix it or what caused it.

[#20]

@Pat_Schultzwrote:  ``I contacted Microsoft [....] Some how my copy became corrupted``

Of course MSFT would say that.  It is much better for them to claim that your files are bad than to admit to their errors in creating updates.

I am more inclined to believe the update is bad; perhaps it caused the file corruption.  That seems more likely, considering the plethora of recurring complaints about Office 365 updates.

Just a biased opinion, not based on any facts.  But my suspicion of the quality of frequent (poorly-tested) updates is the reason why I refuse to "upgrade" to a subscription service.