recalc much slower on mac than pc?

[dh]

I recently posted this question to the microsoft.public.mac.office
newsgroup, and
now realize I should have posted it here. Sorry if this duplicates
something you've
already read. Here's the question:

We have a fairly complex spreadsheet (30 sheets...) with some form
controls ("spinners") used to change certain variables. On a (fairly slow)
pc, these
controls work almost instantaneously -- you click one, the variable is
changed, and the model is recalculated in a fraction of a second. The same
operation on a (pretty fast) mac takes almost 2 seconds. Search of
microsoft support site brings no insight into this.

Does anyone know of a reason, or an excel setting, that might account for
the difference in speed between the two platforms?

Thanks.
-don

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

I recently posted this question to the microsoft.public.mac.office
newsgroup, and
now realize I should have posted it here. Sorry if this duplicates
something you've
already read. Here's the question:

We have a fairly complex spreadsheet (30 sheets...) with some form
controls ("spinners") used to change certain variables. On a (fairly slow)
pc, these
controls work almost instantaneously -- you click one, the variable is
changed, and the model is recalculated in a fraction of a second. The same
operation on a (pretty fast) mac takes almost 2 seconds. Search of
microsoft support site brings no insight into this.

Does anyone know of a reason, or an excel setting, that might account for
the difference in speed between the two platforms?

Thanks.
-don

There is no setting on the Macintosh to accomplish this (unless you are
running in OS 9 where increasing Excel's memory might help.) things are just
slower on a Mac. But, 2 Seconds sounds like a long time. What version of Mac
OS are you using, and what version of Excel?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I recently posted this question to the microsoft.public.mac.office
newsgroup, and
now realize I should have posted it here. Sorry if this duplicates
something you've
already read. Here's the question:

We have a fairly complex spreadsheet (30 sheets...) with some form
controls ("spinners") used to change certain variables. On a (fairly slow)
pc, these
controls work almost instantaneously -- you click one, the variable is
changed, and the model is recalculated in a fraction of a second. The same
operation on a (pretty fast) mac takes almost 2 seconds. Search of
microsoft support site brings no insight into this.

Does anyone know of a reason, or an excel setting, that might account for
the difference in speed between the two platforms?

While there have been significant improvements with XL 10.1.5 and
Panther, MS is still tweaking the speed of MacXL - it's now much faster
than comparable WinXL platforms for *some* operations, miserably slower
for *some* others.

Make sure you've updated to 10.1.5 using the updaters (10.1.2, 10.1.4
and 10.1.5, in order) found at Mactopia Downloads:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx

However, 2 seconds is a long time even for 30 sheets unless you've got
lots of volatile functions (e.g., RAND(), OFFSET(), INDEX(), TODAY(),
NOW(), etc.) which recalc whenever the sheet recalcs.

It's worth noting, however, that WinXL02/03 have significantly improved
calculation schedulers that expedite calculation when there are lots of
cross-sheet references. Reducing cross-sheet references can sometimes
speed up your calc.

You might take a look at Charles Williams's site to see if you can
optimize your calcs a bit:

http://www.decisionmodels.com/optspeed.htm

 

[dh]

Hi Bob, sorry for the delay; I was away for a few days.
We're using Mac OS X 10.3(7B85) and
Office X 10.1.0 (2015)

The reply following yours, from McGimpsey, pointed us to some good
resources. We may be on the path of tracking down unnecessary computations,
that don't show up on the Windows platform. If you have any further ideas,
I'd love to hear them; we're very appreciative of your response. Thanks.
-don

 

[dh]

Thanks an awful lot for your suggestions. The pointer to that web site was
very helpful; we've found a number of "unnecessary" calculations that we can
optimize out. Response is still not great, but it's improving, and we're
not done yet. I appreciate your response.
-don