Extemely slow cell copying with 12.1.3 update

[JimS]

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

I just updated Mac Office 2008 to version 12.1.3. It now takes 42 seconds to copy one cell in my worksheet using Excel 2008. The spinning beach-ball is present the entire time! Nothing can be done during this time, no scrolling, no other cell selection, nothing. Prior to the update, it took 17 seconds to copy this cell. The same cell copies in less than one-half second using Excel 2004. I'm using Mac OS X 10.5.5, 3.5 GB DRAM, G5 PPC dual processors.

What could possibly cause Excel 2008 to be more than 84 times slower in copying a cell than Excel 2004? The cell just has a simple formula in it, "=D57+D68". Those two cells contain SUM formulas, "=SUM(D556)" in cell D57 and "=SUM(D6167)" in cell D68. The cells in those ranges reference the contents of cells in another worksheet in the workbook, and the values in that worksheet come from yet other worksheets in the same workbook.

All this works fine using Excel 2004, but has slowed to a crawl in Excel 2008 making it essentially unusable with this workbook.

Any suggestions for me to try or is this a known problem?

Thanks,
Jim

 

[Pat McMillan]

Is there any way you could send me a file/files that show this problem?

Thanks,

Pat McMillan
(e-mail address removed)

 

[JimS]

Hi Pat,

The workbook contains very sensitive financial information so I can't send it as is. I'll have to see if there's a way I can sanitize it without changing the magnitude of the problem, but it won't be easy. The workbook contains 50+ worksheets, so it will be a lot of work to go through them all and make sure the problem hasn't changed after all the edits.

Thanks,
Jim

 

[Pat McMillan]

Thanks Jim. I understand the problem of sensitive data. If you are able to
come up with a version of the file that you can share, please do. Or if you
encounter it with another file that you can share, please do that. We've
done some investigation today but have not been able to reproduce what
you're seeing.

If anyone on the list sees any performance degradation with copy/paste (or
any other area for that matter) after updating to 12.1.3, please let us
know. We would love to understand what's going on.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Tom]

I also have Excel 2008 for Mac. I basically have given up on Excel. Yes, for me it takes about 45 seconds for my typing to catch up in a cell. I have searched for over a month to find the solution. Nothing so far.

 

[Pat McMillan]

Have you tried turning off the Most Recent file functionality per other
threads in this group: Go to Excel/Preferences... General and uncheck "Show
this number of recent documents:"

http://www.officeformac.com/ProductForums/Excel/2623

Thanks,

Pat

 

[JimS]

Interestingly, I have not had any slow typing problems using Excel 2008. The slow copying problem I had was due to having portions of charts showing in the window where I was doing the cell copying. By inserting columns to force the charts outside the viewing window, copying speed has returned to normal. I found that the display of charts (especially multiple charts) also affects other functions such as the speed of quitting Excel, etc.

Jim

 

[Douga]

I'd like to throw in that when I cleared the recent file list and in Preferences turned off the show recent documents that my slow performance has completely gone away. Almost all my files are stored on a Windows server, so the recent file list was predominantly populated with Windows Server saved files.

So here's a vote for the MacBU to investigate this performance problem as a problem with Excel's recent file list + files stored on a Windows server.

 

[Pat McMillan]

Yes. We recognize that this problem is related to our show recent documents
code and files stored on Windows servers. We're investigating a possible
fix.

Thanks,

Pat