I was hoping to understand why Excel files within my Microsoft 2008 software on my new MacBook Pro run so slow. I have worked with these large Excel files on a PC for years.
My excel is running so slow. When I right click on a cell and click on copy, the circular 'wait' shows up and lasts like 10 seconds before I am able to pick my cell to paste. Windows 7, Home Premium.
The same files on the Mac are running too slow to realistically convert my business to the Mac. For example, Copy and Paste functions as well as highlighting sections of the file are taking several seconds on the Mac. (about 10) Meanwhile, they are nearly instantaneous on the older PC running Microsoft 2002.
Can anyone help me understand why large Excel files run faster on an older pc with Microsoft 2002 than the latest version on a new Mac? Is it just the nature of the newer version for Mac? Will an older version of the software help? [email protected] 5/7/2009, 22:17 น. Hi-I was experiencing slow turn around on EXCEL on my Mac, too.
I called into Microsoft and a very helpful techie led me through this sequence-which clears up problems from corruption that may have been downloaded, imported, whatever. It sped my EXCEL up-so here's what you do: Click on your hard drive Go to USERS Go to Your 'HOUSE' user Then to LIBRARY Then look for COM.MICROSOFT Then for COM.MICROSOFT. EXCEL.PLIST Toss that puppy into the trash Then toss the folder MICROSOFT into the trash Now restart your computer and see if EXCEL is faster. It will take a bit longer to load because it will have to generate new plists -but these won't be corrupt, so it should run faster. Can do the same with WORD, but need to trash WORD.PLIST in that case.
If the above doesn't work, call Microsoft Office Tech Support. You can get their no-charge option and ask 2 questions for free w/in 90 days. [email protected] 6/7/2009, 8:34 น. Hello I also have a similar problem - I trashed the com.microsoft and the folder 'Microsoft' ( although I did that slowly - wondering impact elsewhere? - also read this thread. Hello it seems like any column I am trying to COPY that has this formula in it - JAMS - -say -when I have a LOT ( more than 10,000 cells in a column ) =INDEX( range of cells, MATCH ( item, range of cells, 0 ), x ) where x is the column of data I want returned if a match.
Have used this formula for a long time as being more accurate than vLookup The older version of Excel ( X ) does NOT jam.so I do the copy & paste special for values in the older - then continue on with Office 2008 I do not remember this jamming before I did the office update yesterday. However there is a SLOWNESS to the program on many things - like copy and sort that I did not remember in X version. Regards Greg H.
I'm trying to use Excel 2008 (I wish I still had my old 2004 CD with me) to do some plotting and it's near impossible. I'm plotting spectrum data off of an optical spectrum analyzer, so we're talking some 3000 data points.
I select the data, create a chart (annoying as hell in itself) and once the chart shows up I can't do anything without at least a 10-20second wait, I can't select an axis, move the chart, rename it or anything. Why is this so slow and is there anything I can do to speed things up?? Oh, and doing such plotting using an old school Excel on an old computer running Windows 2000 was no problem at all.
My fix deleting the Users/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.plist fixed my problem. I was only having problems when I was connected to a specific remote disk (which I almost always was). It took 20 seconds to close a LOCAL file that I had just opened (and this was a simple.txt file).
If I wasn't connected to that remote disk, I could close that just-opened local file instantly. Deleting the office plist file fixed it completely. (The plist file is, of course, recreated by the system immediately.).
A solution to slow charts in Excel 2008! I hoped that this problem was just a case of some little bug in Excel 2008 that could be fixed and make charts just as fast as in 2004.
But actually it looks like a more fundamental problem with how Excel 2008 charts get drawn on-screen on the Mac. That's the bad news. The good news is, there are a few effective workarounds:. Avoid using markers in charts with long data series. Alternatively, use a square marker instead of other shapes.
For line charts, set the line width narrower. At 1 point or less, Excel 2008 (12.2.5) can draw a 10,000-point series in about 1 second. At 2.25 points (the default), it takes 5-15 seconds to draw each series (which happens every time you touch the graph or scroll it into view). If you use thick lines (which you shouldn't for this much data!), set the 'cap type' to flat instead of round (the default). With flat caps, it takes 5 seconds to draw a 10,000-point series with a 2.25 pt; with square caps it takes 10 seconds, and with round caps it takes 15 seconds. So, to summarize, with the default settings, Excel 2008 (or actually OS X) spends lots of time (about 15 seconds per 10,000-point series) drawing line segments with round caps for each point in the series.
It does this for every series, every time you touch the chart, which can easily add up to a minute or more for charts with several long series. If you make the line thinner, you can reduce this time to less than a second. It looks like this may actually be Apple's fault. Excel 2008 seems to send standard instructions to OS X to draw line segments with rounded caps, and then OS X takes a long time to draw all of them.
You can verify this by 'printing' the chart to a PDF and then opening it in Preview. Preview (at least on OS X 10.5.8) takes just as long to display each series from the PDF as Excel took to draw it on screen. On the other hand, if you open the PDF in Adobe Illustrator or Acrobat, the chart is displayed instantaneously. As another verification - if you convert the line segments from 2.25 pt to 1 pt in Illustrator and then save the PDF, then Preview displays it in 1 second (instead of 15). But if you then zoom in in Preview, it takes longer to draw.
The PDF itself seems to be pretty clean. If you open it in Adobe Illustrator, you'll find there are just simple line segments for each data point. So kudos to Microsoft for using standard, simple PDF commands for on-screen display and export, but Apple had better find a way to display them more quickly! By the way, has anyone tried working with big charts with thick lines on OS X 10.6? Is it any faster?
(Thanks to for the hint that got me started on this!). Maybe it's Microsoft's fault after all After poking around a little more, I'm inclined to think the slow charts might be Microsoft's fault after all. Excel draws each series in a chart with one disconnected line segment for each data point. If you have thousands of data points, this makes thousands of disconnected line segments. OS X is slow to draw disconnected line segments, especially with round end caps (see page 161 of 'Quartz 2D graphics for Mac OS X developers' by R. Scott Thompson and ), so it tends to choke when it gets thousands of them from Excel.
The right way to draw these series would be to use connected line segments. OS X seems to be able to draw those hundreds of times faster. So someone at Microsoft should change their chart drawing code to do that. (And Apple should improve Quartz to draw disconnected segments as quickly as connected ones.) In the mean time, this points to a couple more workarounds:. Use area charts instead of line charts.
Excel draws area charts with connected lines, so they are very fast. This is more useful for illustrating the source of the problem than solving it. More useful: Turn on the 'smoothed line' option for your line charts. This makes the lines more complicated, but Excel will draw them with connected segments, which are much faster. Solutions that work! Not to my credit, but i found this in another forum and you will LOVE it! The 2 solutions that seem to accelerate my Excel 12.2.7 on Mac OS 10.6.4 which crashed regularly when I tried any large action on a large sheet were: 1) removing recent files 2) Font App: resolving duplicates: Mac and Office both have their own version of Arial, which made Excel spin to a stall and/or crash.
'Try running the OS X app Font Book & using the Validate Fonts & Resolve Duplicates routines. Shut down for a minute or two & see if things improve after restarting. It may also help to go to View Customize Toolbars & Menus & clear the check for 'Show typefaces in font menus'. Also, if you are not already doing so, do most of your work in Normal view.
Page Layout View consumes a lot of overhead & interaction with the printer subsystem. Use it sparingly. Additionally, in Excel Preferences: Make sure Save AutoRecover Data is set for no more frequently than every 10 minutes, Turn off Provide Feedback with sound, Limit the number of recently used files (or turn off altogether), Turn off Provide Feedback with Animation as well as the Paste & Insert Options Smart Buttons. HTH :) Bob Jones MVP Office:Mac'.
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