Slow download of .xls files

[Tschurin]

I occasionally download, from more than one website, .xls files containing
financial data. I do so by right clicking on the file name, selecting “save
target as,†giving it a name and hitting save.
Within the past few weeks, the downloads have gotten very slow. They may
start out at 800 bytes per second, then go to 122 bytes per second, then 42
then 25…None of my other internet functions [browsing, e-mail, etc. have
slowed down; just the downloading of .xls files.] Even small files of 25 kb
now take many minutes to download. Clearly something is wrong.
Any ideas or suggestions?

thanks in advance for any help you can give me on this,
Geoff

 

[Bill Sharpe]

I occasionally download, from more than one website, .xls files containing
financial data. I do so by right clicking on the file name, selecting “save
target as,†giving it a name and hitting save.
Within the past few weeks, the downloads have gotten very slow. They may
start out at 800 bytes per second, then go to 122 bytes per second, then 42
then 25…None of my other internet functions [browsing, e-mail, etc. have
slowed down; just the downloading of .xls files.] Even small files of 25 kb
now take many minutes to download. Clearly something is wrong.
Any ideas or suggestions?

thanks in advance for any help you can give me on this,
Geoff

This isn't an Excel problem; it's an Internet connection problem of some
kind, possibly site related.

Bill

 

[Tschurin]

First of all, I should have mentioned that my computer has Windows XP
professional and Excel 2007, and that my ISP is Verizon DSL.

I did two “speed tests,†one of which clocked my download speed at 400 kb
per second, the other at 600 kb. Even if the actual speed were only half the
lower estimate, that still shouldn’t cause a problem for a 90 kb file, which
is the size of the following file from one of the websites where I am having
this problem. After five minutes, it still hasn’t downloaded.
http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/xls/index/SP500EPSEST.XLS
Yet this power point file at the same website, which is almost twice as
large, downloads in about one second.
http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/ppt/index/CorePowerpoint.ppt

I occasionally download, from more than one website, .xls files containing
financial data. I do so by right clicking on the file name, selecting “save
target as,†giving it a name and hitting save.
Within the past few weeks, the downloads have gotten very slow. They may
start out at 800 bytes per second, then go to 122 bytes per second, then 42
then 25…None of my other internet functions [browsing, e-mail, etc. have
slowed down; just the downloading of .xls files.] Even small files of 25 kb
now take many minutes to download. Clearly something is wrong.
Any ideas or suggestions?

thanks in advance for any help you can give me on this,
Geoff

This isn't an Excel problem; it's an Internet connection problem of some
kind, possibly site related.

Bill

 

[Bill Sharpe]

First of all, I should have mentioned that my computer has Windows XP
professional and Excel 2007, and that my ISP is Verizon DSL.

I did two “speed tests,†one of which clocked my download speed at 400 kb
per second, the other at 600 kb. Even if the actual speed were only half the
lower estimate, that still shouldn’t cause a problem for a 90 kb file, which
is the size of the following file from one of the websites where I am having
this problem. After five minutes, it still hasn’t downloaded.
http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/xls/index/SP500EPSEST.XLS
Yet this power point file at the same website, which is almost twice as
large, downloads in about one second.
http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/ppt/index/CorePowerpoint.ppt

I occasionally download, from more than one website, .xls files containing
financial data. I do so by right clicking on the file name, selecting “save
target as,†giving it a name and hitting save.
Within the past few weeks, the downloads have gotten very slow. They may
start out at 800 bytes per second, then go to 122 bytes per second, then 42
then 25…None of my other internet functions [browsing, e-mail, etc. have
slowed down; just the downloading of .xls files.] Even small files of 25 kb
now take many minutes to download. Clearly something is wrong.
Any ideas or suggestions?

thanks in advance for any help you can give me on this,
Geoff

This isn't an Excel problem; it's an Internet connection problem of some
kind, possibly site related.

Bill

I also have XP Pro, Office 2007, but my ISP is Verizon FiOS. I
downloaded your reference XLS file in about one second and then opened
it in Excel 2007 after running a virus scan on it.

The slow download is not an Excel problem; it is a connection problem of
some kind. Have you tried downloading XLS files from other locations,
such as Microsoft's sites? Have you tried a different browser? I use
Firefox. Have you tried saving the file without renaming it?

Bill