Excel very slow to save and work with pivots

[aa1]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Hello,

I recently started using Excel 2008 for Mac and have been having several problems. First, Excel often takes almost 30 seconds on average when saving/autosaving. Second, when using a pivot table, it takes 1.5 minutes to simply "refresh". I was hoping that today's update would solve some of these problems, but they are still happening, and now, none of my charts are updating. I have to manually go to "select data..." every time, and then hit "ok". I haven't dared to explore which other functions are not working properly in this version of Excel, but I was using Excel 2007 on my PC before buying a Mac, and never experienced these delays. My other Office products seem to be functioning normally.

I'm using a Macbook Pro 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB or RAM.

 

[Pat McMillan]

Would it be possible to send me a file that shows these problems? Regarding
the chart updating problem, are you saying that this began with the 12.1.3
update, or did it happen before as well?

Thanks,

Pat McMillan
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Dave]

I am a big user of pivot tables and excel for the mac is horribly slow. I find word and powerpoint to be slow too but you can really notice an enormous difference in excel, especially with pivot tables. Its almost like it was crippled so people go and buy excel for windows.

By the way, excel for windows works fine running vmware on my mac but I would like to have it just as speedy on my mac!

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

I am a big user of pivot tables and excel for the mac is horribly slow. I find
word and powerpoint to be slow too but you can really notice an enormous
difference in excel, especially with pivot tables. Its almost like it was
crippled so people go and buy excel for windows.

By the way, excel for windows works fine running vmware on my mac but I would
like to have it just as speedy on my mac!

Well, Dave. We ALL would like it to be just as speedy as it is in vmware.
But, unfortunately, it isn't. Maybe later in a future version. Express your
request to Microsoft via the send feedback choice in the help menu.

 

[Pat McMillan]

Well, one thing that could be causing unusual slowness in pivot tables in
Excel 2008 is that in Excel 2008 we increased the number of rows in a
workbook to well over a million (from around 65,000 in Excel 2004). So if a
pivot table is referencing source data using a full column reference (like
$A:$A) as opposed to a more constrained reference (such as $A$1:$A$1000),
then it can take a really long time for the pivot table to refresh. This is
something we're working to fix in an upcoming release. But if that's the
problem in your workbooks a good temporary workaround is to actually
constrain the reference to the exact set of source data being referenced by
your pivot tables and then save the file with the new references.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[nearNorth]

have just upgraded, and am watching an autorecover of an excel workbook with a number of pivot tables [each on their own worksheet] exceed 20 minutes!

the file was opened, and then saved as a excel 2008. that process took a while, but i put that down to a one-time conversion. now i'm beginning to wonder. excel has 94-68% of CPU and it is still saving AutoRecoverInfo 26 minutes later.

this performance is simply unacceptable. is there something that can be done to make this more efficient? or am i going to have to downgrade? i could work with this file -- and others like it -- without any trouble in excel 2004 [on the macbook pro with less memroy and processing speed]

thanks for any tips.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

have just upgraded, and am watching an autorecover of an excel workbook with
a number of pivot tables [each on their own worksheet] exceed 20 minutes!

the file was opened, and then saved as a excel 2008. that process took a
while, but i put that down to a one-time conversion. now i'm beginning to
wonder. excel has 94-68% of CPU and it is still saving AutoRecoverInfo 26
minutes later.

this performance is simply unacceptable. is there something that can be done
to make this more efficient? or am i going to have to downgrade? i could work
with this file -- and others like it -- without any trouble in excel 2004 [on
the macbook pro with less memroy and processing speed]

There's something else going on. Don't know how long "a while" is, but
based on my experience, opening a .doc file in XL08 shouldn't take
significantly longer than in XL04. Saving shouldn't, either. And
certainly 26 minutes for Autorecover is ridiculous.

Does this happen in a fresh user account?

 

[nearNorth]

it doesn't happen with all .xlsx files, just the ones that contain a number of pivot tables.

smaller spreadsheets that contain lists are fine, they open quickly and there is a slight performance improvement

 

[Pat McMillan]

I'm almost certain your answer is one I posted earlier in this very same
thread. Can you please try this out and see if it solves your problem:

"One thing that could be causing unusual slowness in pivot tables in
Excel 2008 is that in Excel 2008 we increased the number of rows in a
workbook to well over a million (from around 65,000 in Excel 2004). So if a
pivot table is referencing source data using a full column reference (like
$A:$A) as opposed to a more constrained reference (such as $A$1:$A$1000),
then it can take a really long time for the pivot table to refresh. This is
something we're working to fix in an upcoming release. But if that's the
problem in your workbooks a good temporary workaround is to actually
constrain the reference to the exact set of source data being referenced by
your pivot tables and then save the file with the new references."

Thanks,

Pat