Slow lookup and calculation

[danyoung02]

I am a recent convert from PC to Mac and have been generally pleased
with Microsoft Office for Mac - until now.

I am running Microsoft Excel 2004 for Mac, Version 11.3.6 on an Intel
Macbook Pro, OSX Version 10.4.1.

I have two files each containing roughly 5,000 records. File A
contains a vlookup column that references File B. The lookup is
ridiculously slow. Further, simply having File A open causes all
other functions in other excel files to be ridiculously slow.

Just for yucks, I ran the same files on Windows Excel 2003 (same Mac
machine using parallels) and got a good response.

Am I missing something or is Excel for Mac inherently slow?

 

[CyberTaz]

There are at least 2 factors to take into account that cause the degradation
in performance you so obviously noted, Dan:

1- Office 2004 is somewhat slow to begin with, although not so much as to be
problematic, except that...

2- On an Intel Mac it is actually running through the Rosetta emulator since
O2004 isn't Universal Binary. That's where the real bottleneck occurs. I've
seen some figures that indicate that just about any operations in most
programs execute more quickly on a comparably equipped PPC G5 as opposed to
running through Rosetta on an Intel Mac.

Hold on to your patience until O2008 comes around and I think you'll find
that the lappy will sddenly come into its own from a preformance
standpoint

 

[engrav]

Mac Pro and 10.5.2
I have Excel 2008 and still VLOOKUP and calculate is brutal slow
I did not erase 2004, do I need to erase 2004? is it confused
or???

thank you

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Mac Pro and 10.5.2
I have Excel 2008 and still VLOOKUP and calculate is brutal slow
I did not erase 2004, do I need to erase 2004? is it confused
or???

thank you

No, Excel 204 should make no difference here. What is "brutal slow"? What
does your data look like? How many rows and columns? How many vlookups are
you doing?

 

[engrav]

thank you for asking

about 10,000 rows and xxx columns in the spreadsheet
lookup is from a second worksheet within the same workbook
lookup is for one column only
takes approximately 7 minutes, several minutes longer than 2004

in addition
progress bar does not work so I do not know where it is and
Excel uses only 1 of 8 cores on this Mac Pro

if you can fix me up would be cool, otherwise I will drop back to 2004

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

thank you for asking

about 10,000 rows and xxx columns in the spreadsheet
lookup is from a second worksheet within the same workbook
lookup is for one column only
takes approximately 7 minutes, several minutes longer than 2004

in addition
progress bar does not work so I do not know where it is and
Excel uses only 1 of 8 cores on this Mac Pro

if you can fix me up would be cool, otherwise I will drop back to 2004

Is it possible for you to send me this work book? I'd like to take a look.

 

[engrav]

thank you
not sure how to send here so sent via yousendit with email also

by the way, I check the box below "email me" but no emails arrive

thank you

 

[engrav]

to "close" this loop

I changed the vlookup table to an absolute reference as you suggested and it cut the test time with 2008 from 11 minutes to 1 minute 37 seconds which is quite useable, thank you very much

it changed the 2004 Rosetta test time from 1:57 to 1:15, so 2004 still squeaked out a slight victory over 2008 which is somewhat disappointing as I had been hoping for quicker speeds in 2008 over 2004 with these large spreadsheets as indicated above in this thread

 

[capedcrusader]

to "close" this loop

I changed the vlookup table to an absolute reference as you suggested and it cut the test time with 2008 from 11 minutes to 1 minute 37 seconds which is quite useable, thank you very much

it changed the 2004 Rosetta test time from 1:57 to 1:15, so 2004 still squeaked out a slight victory over 2008 which is somewhat disappointing as I had been hoping for quicker speeds in 2008 over 2004 with these large spreadsheets as indicated above in this thread

 

[capedcrusader]

oops, sorry for the blank post. I am having the same issue. I have excel 2008
for mac and a spreadsheet with a fair number of lookups takes 20 seconds to
recalculate. On office 2007 for windows, the same spreadsheet on the same
computer (MBP 2.6 with 4g memory) recalculates almost instantaneously. Very
frustrating.