2007 slow vs 2003 and it crashes?

[Roger]

I have made a number of attempts to get help from MS but they do nto seem
interested.

Situation:
Current performance of Excel 2007 under WinXP 2GB Ram 1.8Ghz cpu
vs
Excel 2003 under Vista 2GB ram 1.8 Ghz cpu.
Note I initially ran into the problem on the XP machine with a spreadsheet I
have been running for about 12 years starting with Ofs 97. Did the timed back
to back on the same file that was transfered between the machines to avoid
interation problems of having both ver on same PC.

In both cases I had the file on my desktop and no other programs were
running. Open the file by dble click
Excel 07 22 sec
Excel 03 11 sec including click on warning to enable macros

Change the value of a single cell
Excel 03 <1 sec
Excel 07 Gave up after two minutes. Attempted to close Excell which caused
crash of program.

Despite sending a copy of the specific file to a MS "Expert" he was not able
to provide a fix.

Bottom line Excell 2007 appears not to be out of Beta.
I am attempting to uninstall and go back to Office 2003 untill such time as
MS finishes the development of Office 2007.

 

[Sheeloo]

Any chance you can share the file?

Also can you save inot XLSX format? If yes, then do that first and then try
to edit...

To me your problem says that Excel 2007 is NOT good at backward
comaptibility (going back to Excel 97) but this is in no way related to its
capabilities to handle new files...

I have been using it for more than a year now and never had any problems...
of course I do not have any files older than Excel 2003... since I had
converted all my earlier files to Excel 2003 format and I use Excel 2003 for
those older files.

--------------------------------- ----
Pl. click ''''Yes'''' if this was helpful...

 

[JLatham]

Sheeloo, there are at least some features from Excel 97 that 2007 cannot deal
with. I ran into that recently in an application I developed along about
1999 for a large communications company - apparently it held up just fine
through upgrades in Excel UNTIL 2007 and then began failing. I found and
fixed the problem so that it now runs under it all. My point being that if
there is one incompatibility that caused a runtime error, there may be others
that just lock things up.

I remember Roger's other cry for help, and in it I recommended he get in
touch with the group set up to deal with the performance issues so many are
experiencing with Excel 2007. He did so, and as he notes here, in the end
there was no help for him. I don't have an answer either - and I have often
seen performance degradations in 2007 vs 2003, and have even found that 2003
running on "smaller, slower" machines performed better than 2007 running on
newer, faster, bigger (more RAM) systems I own.

I personally wish Roger the best of luck in getting 2007 off of his system
and up and running with 2003 again. I hope he doesn't run into a problem
such as a coworker of mine has: he can't get back to 2003 after having
installed 2007. No, I haven't looked at his system and he hasn't asked me
to, and I'm not volunteering!

 

[Sheeloo]

Hello 'JLatham',

I was only trying to argue against the point that ' Bottom line Excell 2007
appears not to be out of Beta'...

I would be the first to agree that "Excel 2007 is NOT as good as Excel 2003
at backward
comaptibility (going back to Excel 97)"...

I am using Office 2007 on a 1GB Office XP laptop and 3GB Vista PC... and I
am happy with it...

Regarding speed and learning curve etc... everyone agrees that Vista and
Office 2007 are tough...

My only contention is that Office 2007 is not ALL bad...

Regards,
Sheeloo

 

[Roger]

J
Thanks for reply that seems to sum up my problem and the complete
disinterest from MS in solving this Office 2007 problem.
It took me a couple of hours to, I think, completely remove Ofs 2007. Even
had to find a kb http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218 to guide me through
the REGEDIT manual removal of dozens of left over keys etc. Even that kb
wasn't complete. Not sure if I suceeded as I have a minor problem with 2003
as I have to start Excell first then open the file. I think this problem was
the result of taking "advice" from others on how to fix this malware known as
Office 2007.
Of course MS has no way for me to advise them of their error in their kb.
Just additional evidence of their attitude that the user is only good as a
cash cow.

I suppose I could spend the hours needed to write a new spreadsheet but with
a few hundred linked cells across 8 worksheets I do not see why I should do
that when the cause of the problem is MS fault.

Thanks for the wish of good luck. I need it. This is enough to send me to
Open Office when MS Office 2003 is no longer viable option.

 

[JLatham]

Sorry, I really didn't mean to appear to be disagreeing with you. I was kind
of just trying to express my sympathy for Roger's situation, and also just
let you know that there are issues with files that have been brought forward
from Office 97 days since you said your files didn't go back that far.

I know of several people who've tried moving to 2007 only to HAVE to move
back to 2003 or earlier because of the performance issues with 2007,
especially in the area of charting/graphing. I felt bad because I actually
recommended an upgrade to 2007 for one of my clients only to have the
charting actually fail eventually when trying to put multiple charts on a
single sheet (52 charts - it kept the total count of data points for all
charts rather than for each and eventually blew up). Not only that it did,
and still does even after changes, take 10x to deal with those charts in 2007
(1.5 min in 2003 on a 2.4GHz single core CPU with 1GB Ram, 10-12 minutes on
2.4GHz dual core CPU with 2 GB RAM and even ReadyBoost RAM installed).

Roger, I think it's not so much that Microsoft doesn't care - otherwise they
wouldn't have set up the performance evaluation group that I pointed you to
from your earlier posting. But I suspect that the number of problems they're
encountering simply may be covering them up - that's based simply on my
observation of reported Excel 2007 in these very forums. I see lots more
"help ... this doesn't work" kinds of requests for 2007 than for help in
doing things in it, while for 2003 and earlier, we see the "how do I..." type
of questions.

Personally, I'm kind of waiting to see if any actually fills up even a
single worksheet in 2007 and if the system is usable at that point <g>.
Think about it:
1,048,576 rows * 16,384 columns = 17,179,869,184 cells and if you just put a
single character into each, it takes approximately 16GB of RAM/virtual disc
space to hold the contents ... plus the overhead for the application, the
workbook and worksheet definition! Of course, that may not ever happen since
that's probably more than one person could type in a lifetime: typing 1
character and moving to the next cell at the rate of 1 cell/second = 544+
years to fill a sheet! LOL!

 

[Sheeloo]

Hello JLatham,

Thanks for your kind response. Your point is well taken...

I sure won't try to fill a Excel 2007 worksheet...

Regards,
Sheeloo