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Question
Saturday, February 23, 2019 2:48 AM
Excel on my late 2016 MacBook Pro is using huge amounts of memory. All I'm doing is simple data entry. After opening an online version of excel, I elect to edit it in my copy of excel, as I cannot edit the online version. It starts out using about 150 MB of memory, but then gradually increases its use of memory until its over 2 GB if I let it go that far. But long before it's using even 1 GB, it's generally taking minutes of being unresponsive before I can do anything but wait, so for minutes at a time between every entry I'm just sitting waiting for it to catch up! So I leave Activity Monitor open to keep track of how badly it's doing. Finally, after making certain it has truly saved, I'm forced to "Force Quit" Excel in Activity Monitor, then reopening Excel and starting all over again until it quickly becomes unresponsive again! I have tried setting autosave to every minute instead of the default 10 minutes, because there have been a number of times when I've lost several hours of work, because it said it was "saving", but it was never really saving! Needless to say, I'm pretty disgusted with Excel's complete lack of performance! What is the problem?
I have a late 2016 15.4" MacBook Pro optioned to the hilt.
I have a Microsoft 365 Home subscription, so it's always the latest version.
All replies (4)
Monday, February 25, 2019 8:41 AM
Hi,
Did this problem only appear in Excel? How about Word?
How about opening file from local?
How did you open file from online?
I suggest you check if this problem appear in all Workbooks from online, try to open different kinds of Excel file formats from IE and check the result.
If this problem only appear in a specific file, please confirm if this file contain any formulas, links.
If this problem appear in all Excel files, please try to revert back to earlier version of Office for MAC:
Please check if this problem is related to updates for Excel.
Try these methods and let me know the result, I'm glad to help you.
Regards,
Emi Zhang
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Monday, February 25, 2019 2:19 PM
Only Excel. Never happens in Word, but I don’t have to open and edit any Word documents from online. The file is from my company, so it’s online. I cannot edit it online. To edit, I open it in my local copy of Excel, and I edit it. It then is saved back to the online copy at the company. Although, it frequently takes inordinate amounts of time to finally save, no doubt as a result of this ongoing issue. There have been a number of times when, like so many others noted online, I’ve lost hours of work because of it. It happens on every ExceI file I open from my company. All they are, are material takeoff lists. I have to read prints in Revu, look at the scope of work PDFs, and then, from the pre-existing Excel list, enter the material quantities needed, and add a note describing what it’s used for. I have very little use for other Excel files. I don’t have the time to spend trying to work on unneeded Excel files. This is a VERY well known issue, as there are numerous examples online of people complaining about Excel using tremendous amounts of resources and memory, with many being unable continue work on a file because of it, being out of memory, and so on. This, while using very competent computers, with very little else running on them. So, because it is so well known and documented, Microsoft should be giving us all a resolution, instead of expecting us to resolve the issue by trouble shooting the issue, and by trial and error, having to try one thing after another. I have an Office 365 Home subscription. So Excel and all Office apps are automatically updated to the latest versions. I don’t appreciate the need to go back to old versions. If as is evident, this issue is so well known, why doesn’t Microsoft just fix it? I will try to revert, and see if that helps, but as I said, I don’t appreciate having to in effect, be an unpaid Microsoft worker to solve well known and long standing problems that they already know about. This is a long standing issue that’s been ongoing for many years dating back to at least 2013. So, my question for you is: will going back to Office 2016 for Mac 15.xx versions from 16.xx, really fix a problem that’s been around since then? When was the 15.xx version a current version? Before 2013? Before I spend all the time and effort to do this, Please answer this question.
Ron11
Monday, February 25, 2019 2:23 PM
Sorry that everything is lumped together in one long paragraph. I had formatted it with each response separated into a short paragraph separated by white space. But the default lumps it all together, making it harder for you to read and make sense of it. Sorry.
Ron11
Monday, February 25, 2019 5:24 PM
Added note:
Regarding the following reply:
"All Office 2016 for Mac users received an update to the new '16.xx' build. While these builds contain advanced new features, some existing third-party extensions may have compatibility problems with the new version. If you run into this issue, contact the publisher of your third-party extension to find out if an update is available.
As you can see as such its not really a Microsoft issue."
I have no 3rd party extensions for Excel. I seldom if ever use 3rd party extensions. I like to run lean and mean. Besides, in many cases, 3rd party extensions are only adding something that's already there in the original application, if you know where to find it and use it. So bottom line: It's not a 3rd party extension issue in my case. It's a Microsoft issue.
Ron11