Large diagram crash

[Adan]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel Hello,

what is wrong with excel 2008?

As soon as I have some data larger than say 10000 numbers and want to create a simple line diagram, the program crashes.

Same file on a windows vista comuter and excel 2007 takes 1 second to create the chart without worries.

I have a 2ghz macbook. with 3gb ram. I work in research and all my data is larger than 10000.

How can that be?

Thank you,

Adan

 

[John McGhie]

Since you don't specify your update levels, start with the basics:

1- Make sure Office is fully updated to 12.2.4
2- Make sure OS X is fully updated to 10.6.3
3- Start Disk Utility and run Repair Disk Permissions
4- Shut down your Mac until the power goes off, then restart. This runs the
system clean-up tasks.

Confirming all of that it will make it possible to determine how to approach
the problem. Until that's all done it's pointless to chase symptoms.

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel
Hello,

what is wrong with excel 2008?

As soon as I have some data larger than say 10000 numbers and want to create a
simple line diagram, the program crashes.

Same file on a windows vista comuter and excel 2007 takes 1 second to create
the chart without worries.

I have a 2ghz macbook. with 3gb ram. I work in research and all my data is
larger than 10000.

How can that be?

Thank you,

Adan

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[Adan]

Hello john,

thank you for your answer.

Everything is up to date.
I repair my disk permissions regularly as well.
Just shut down and restarted....

Same problem. And I have read elsewhere that other poeple have these kind of issues with Excel 2008. I just cant believe that it is soooo bad if it works on an equal or even slower Windows computer with Excel 2007 without any issues at all....

Please let me know if you need any other specs to help determine the problem.

Thanks again!

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Adan:

OK, please email me ([email protected]) a sample of the sheet and a
description of the chart you want to create (if you can...). I need to see
what's going on...

Let me correct one misapprehension: it does NOT work on Windows
Windows is using completely different software. Excel 2008 is not a copy of
Excel 2007, it's a different program, written on the Mac.

Cheers

Hello john,

thank you for your answer.

Everything is up to date.
I repair my disk permissions regularly as well.
Just shut down and restarted....

Same problem. And I have read elsewhere that other poeple have these kind of
issues with Excel 2008. I just cant believe that it is soooo bad if it works
on an equal or even slower Windows computer with Excel 2007 without any issues
at all....

Please let me know if you need any other specs to help determine the problem.

Thanks again!

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[shoe]

Help! I wonder if I'm having the same problem? I got a new macbook last year, upgraded to 10.6 (now 10.6.3), then installed Office 2008 - and now any chart (scatterplot) based on > several hundred points leads excel to use 100% of the CPU and hang - the moment I even "mouse" over the chart. I've already done other things - resolved duplicate fonts, made my default printer something other than HP, repaired all disk permissions (these seem to have helped w/ issues related to having something other than plain text in the files) - but havent fixed this!
As others have said, this # of datapoints wasnt a problem with my previous setup (xp and excel 2003) or on my wife's mac (10.5 and excel 2004). I often work w/ >1000 rows of data so this is critical for me.

 

[Jim Gordon Mac MVP]

Help! I wonder if I'm having the same problem? I got a new macbook last
year, upgraded to 10.6 (now 10.6.3), then installed Office 2008 - and
now any chart (scatterplot) based on > several hundred points leads
excel to use 100% of the CPU and hang - the moment I even "mouse" over
the chart. I've already done other things - resolved duplicate fonts,
made my default printer something other than HP, repaired all disk
permissions (these seem to have helped w/ issues related to having
something other than plain text in the files) - but havent fixed this!
As others have said, this # of datapoints wasnt a problem with my
previous setup (xp and excel 2003) or on my wife's mac (10.5 and excel
2004). I often work w/ >1000 rows of data so this is critical for me.

Make sure you have updated to the current version of Office and also
have the all MacOSX updates installed. Run Disk Utility to verify the
start-up disk and repair permissions, then try again.

-Jim

 

[John McGhie]

It's possible

Adan's problem was that he doesn't have enough memory or CPU grunt on the
machine he was using (a MacBook...) to calculate his sheet. My MacBook is
worse than his, and reliably reproduced his problem

The MacPro eventually chugged its way through the chart.

However, he also exceeded the hard limit of 32,000 data points and 255 data
series that applies in Excel 2008.

Excel 2008 is notoriously inefficient with large datasets: at some point it
will just choke: you need very serious hardware to get it to keep going.

You will all be relieved to hear that the NEXT version of Excel on the Mac
should cope with these things in the blink of an eye. It's an upgrade worth
waiting for.

In your case, roll back to Office 2004 if you want this to work.

Cheers

Help! I wonder if I'm having the same problem? I got a new macbook last
year, upgraded to 10.6 (now 10.6.3), then installed Office 2008 - and now any
chart (scatterplot) based on > several hundred points leads excel to use 100%
of the CPU and hang - the moment I even "mouse" over the chart. I've already
done other things - resolved duplicate fonts, made my default printer
something other than HP, repaired all disk permissions (these seem to have
helped w/ issues related to having something other than plain text in the
files) - but havent fixed this!
As others have said, this # of datapoints wasnt a problem with my previous
setup (xp and excel 2003) or on my wife's mac (10.5 and excel 2004). I often
work w/ >1000 rows of data so this is critical for me.

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[shoe]

Thank you Jim and John for the comments. Seems like 4GB RAM and a 2.4 GHz core 2 duo processor should be enough - it was getting stuck graphing >1000 datapoints from just 2 dataseries (and everything is up to date, disk permissions checked and repaired). Sounds like there is nothing to be done except swear and find some way around this( I dont have Office 2004 - and dont want to carry around my old pc laptop). Ridiculous, really. When's the next version of Office for Mac due out?

 

[John McGhie]

Yeah, I would say so.

I used an eight-core MacPro with 16 GB of memory and it barely made it
through Adan's chart

The next version is due "Holiday season 2010" (whatever that means).

Expect huge improvements in everything...

Cheers

Thank you Jim and John for the comments. Seems like 4GB RAM and a 2.4 GHz
core 2 duo processor should be enough - it was getting stuck graphing >1000
datapoints from just 2 dataseries (and everything is up to date, disk
permissions checked and repaired). Sounds like there is nothing to be done
except swear and find some way around this( I dont have Office 2004 - and dont
want to carry around my old pc laptop). Ridiculous, really. When's the next
version of Office for Mac due out?

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]

 

[shahroozohio]

I am glad to hear that other users have been suffering from the same issues, i.e., crawling speed of Excel 2008. I've been posting my problems on this forum for the past year or so.

Since Excel 2008 is practically useless for what I need to do, I use Excel 2003 (yes, the Windows version) via Parallels to make sure that I can get my work done. As a structural engineering faculty involved in major research projects, I often plot data from 20 columns with 15000 to 20000 of rows. Excel 2003 has NO problems, but Excel 2008 will simply choke and become unresponsive. I've the latest versions of everything and I've dual core with 4 GB of ram.

I can't wait to see the next version of Excel. I just hope that it will perform as well as what Excel 2003 or 2007 does.

 

[Adan]

Hey guys.

Thanks for all the answers.

It is really unbelievable what kind of crap they sell, successfull sell.

Lets hope the next version will be better.....