unresponsive Excel 2007 sp2 - Charts w/ 2 ordinates

[Boris]

Hi, I am having a really difficult time with Excel 2007 sp2... I have some
quite modest charts (line charts with a date category axis or scatter charts)
with two (or more) series (each with perhaps 4000 data points) plotted
against two y axes (with limits manually set). The workbooks containing these
charts just go crazy, becoming unresponsive for 10's of minutes before
updating or allowing any changes to be made (or even allowing me to copy the
charts). This is very reminiscent of an issue with Excel 2007 sp1, which was
fixed with a special hotfix (available only on request). Has this issue
reappeared with sp2? If so, is a similar fix available? This is really
driving me bananas... (and I have to say that I have so far failed to see the
significant improvements I was anticipating from sp2...).
Any help or suggestions would be most gratefully received.
Best wishes, Boris

 

[iranuc]

Try inserting a blank row just above the data. I had the same problem but
with as many as 48000 rows and this seems to wotk.

 

[Boris]

Hi
Many thanks for the suggestion. I have tried that but it did not seem to
make any significant difference (I inserted the row just above the data,
between the data and the row containing series names).
I have now also experimented a bit further with this particular workbook. I
restored my system to an older state, form an old system image, using Office
2007 SP1, and could manipulate the sheet and the graphs etc to my heart's
content without any problem. Then I installed Office 2007 SP2 on that system
and bang - the response time went completely up the spout with many periods
of inactivity and short term ".... is not responding...". I have also tried
to recreate the graphs and workbook from scratch, and have tried on a few
other machines running Office 2007 SP2 and the [problem remains so this would
definitely appear top be an issue with SP2....
I am now seriously considering ditching 2007 all together if I can find my
old Office CDs...
Thanks again and best wishes, Boris.

 

[Thom]

Boris, I wish I had a fix available for you, but I am also
unfortunately experiencing the same problem. I work for a water
company and practically all of our graphs have become useless with the
SP2 installation. Much of the graphing I do requires two vertical and
sometimes two horizontal axes as well. I originally thought that I was
having problems because I still saved our files in the .xls format. I
have tried, over the last three days, to recreate the graphs from
scratch in the .xlsx format. From there I either get to a point were I
am unable to proceed and the program crashes, or I save and close the
document but it will not reopen. I have also tried several computers
running SP2 and SP1. SP2 is the only one experiencing any problems.

I also was hoping that SP2 would be able to fix problems still
dangling around from the initial setup of Excel 2007, maybe they'll
come out with a hotfix for their service pack. Or then again, maybe
I'm a little too hopeful.

Good luck to us all, Thom

 

[Boris]

Hi Thom,
Many thanks for your input. I am surprised this issue hasn't come up more
often yet! I have gone back to SP1 for Office 2007 (and also have reinstalled
Excel 2003 as well!). The good news is that the behaviour has in the meantime
been verified by a very helpful Excel MVP who has "escalated" the issue to
Microsoft so perhaps we will get a fix soon...
In the interim, I did get (very slightly) improved (but still totally
unacceptable) performance by using the trick of inserting a blank row at the
beginning of the data, as suggested by iranuc.
Anyway, keep your eyes open and perhaps we will get a fix but I don't
suppose Excel 2007 will ever be as slick as its 2003 predecessor.
Best wishes, Boris.