slow performance making x y graphs

[Dan53]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel I am having problem with Excel in Office 2008. I am trying to use a spreadsheet with approximately 6700 rows and columns A through "BN". When I tried to generate a X Y plot in this file, I get a spinning beach ball for several minutes and sometimes the plot will go through, other times the program hangs and I have to force quit to exit.

I saved the file in a format that can be read by Excel Office X version and the older version handled the graphs without problem. I've tried manipulating the spreadsheet with the 2008 and X versions of Excel on two different computers, a dual processor iMac and Mac Pro laptop with an Intel processor. The slow performance problems are present on both machines with 2008, but not X. The iMac has eight gigs of RAM and the laptop has four, so it's not a shortage of RAM.

This new version of Excel seems to be buggy. For example, when I define keyboard strokes for editing commands such as "extended to the right", the commands work for short interval of time and then for no apparent reason keyboard commands no longer work and I have to use a pull down menu for the editing. Today I was filling in a very small spreadsheet and formatted the target cells as a “general” since I was filling in the cells with time intervals such as two - six to indicate 2 PM until 6 PM. The cells were formatted as “general”, yet every time I entered “2 – 6”, the program converted the data to a date, February 6.

The problems with Excel 2008 are present on the machines that are running system 10.6.2. Is anyone else having these problems?

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Dan:

Well, as we well know, all complex software has bugs, particularly the ones
I write

Excel 2008 is not as fast as Microsoft wanted it to be. Working with large
spreadsheets, you will find it slower than some of its predecessors. It's
reasonable to expect that the next version, due at the end of this year,
will be substantially faster.

It's also important to ensure that you have applied the latest updates to
Office 2008: some of them will produce speed improvements.

If you care to share with us the details of your other difficulties, I hope
we can help you find solutions for most of them.

For example, if you go to Excel>Preferences and turn OFF "Autocomplete for
cell values" you will no longer get text converted to dates.

Hope this helps

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel
I am having problem with Excel in Office 2008. I am trying to use a
spreadsheet with approximately 6700 rows and columns A through "BN". When I
tried to generate a X Y plot in this file, I get a spinning beach ball for
several minutes and sometimes the plot will go through, other times the
program hangs and I have to force quit to exit.

I saved the file in a format that can be read by Excel Office X version and
the older version handled the graphs without problem. I've tried manipulating
the spreadsheet with the 2008 and X versions of Excel on two different
computers, a dual processor iMac and Mac Pro laptop with an Intel processor.
The slow performance problems are present on both machines with 2008, but not
X. The iMac has eight gigs of RAM and the laptop has four, so it's not a
shortage of RAM.

This new version of Excel seems to be buggy. For example, when I define
keyboard strokes for editing commands such as "extended to the right", the
commands work for short interval of time and then for no apparent reason
keyboard commands no longer work and I have to use a pull down menu for the
editing. Today I was filling in a very small spreadsheet and formatted the
target cells as a ³general² since I was filling in the cells with time
intervals such as two - six to indicate 2 PM until 6 PM. The cells were
formatted as ³general², yet every time I entered ³2 ­ 6², the program
converted the data to a date, February 6.

The problems with Excel 2008 are present on the machines that are running
system 10.6.2. Is anyone else having these problems?

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