Really slow excel 2007 on vista

[glew1028]

Hi Everyone,

Just wondering if there are others out there who have had problems with Microsoft excel 2007. I have just got a new computer at work with windows vista and a nice brand new copy of office 2007. I use excel to analyse thousands of data points from a data aquisition device, and when I do a simple x vs y scatter plot, excel 2007 cannot handle this, and subsequently takes ages to respond (at least 10 mins). I got fairly annoyed so I decided to install the older version (excel 2003) and it works perfectly!

I'm convinced that it is the new software problem, as vista seems to handle the 2003 excel with no problems.

Having convinced my supervisor to fork out money for office 2007, I feel I should really get to the bottom of this, and not let microsoft get away with this! I understand that there will be problems with new software packages, and microsoft will probably release a service pack in a year or so, but surely excel 2007 should be able to do simple tasks!?

Opinions appreciated!

 

[halo71]

What are your new computer's specs? I have ran Excel 07 on my Vista laptop without any issues at all. Although I do prefer Open Office. Which is FREE, and compatible with MS Office. You could have saved the boss a few bucks!

 

[glew1028]

Cheers halo,
It is a hp pavillion a600n, AMD 64 x2 dual core processor 4200+, 1024 MB RAM, 250GB hard drive. I think I will download that openoffice (but don't tell the boss!!).

 

[halo71]

Although I have not had this issue you speak of. Seems like there is a known issue about it. I just Googled 'excel 2007 running slow on Vista' and there is a lot of information about it. I did read something about it being slow when the computer is on a network. I have not ran Excel 07 while connected to my home or work networks so I am not sure.

 

[hydronaut08]

I too have had major problems with the performance of Excel 2007 on Vista.

With a slower computer (1GHz, 512MB RAM) running Excel 97 or 03 on XP, I could work with plots of up to about 300,000 pts. These files were on the order of 100MB.

Now with Excel 07 on Vista with a faster computer (1.9GHz, 3GB RAM), I get crashes even with plots of 5,000 pts. (Files of 15MB).

The words Matlab, Python, and nice job Microsoft come to mind.

So glew1028, I feel your pain. I don't know whether the problem is Vista or Office 2007. Please post if you ind anything out.

 

[Aragorn69]

Excel 2007 is extremely slow

I don't think the problem is specific to Vista.

Almost 2 years after Excel 2007 has been released, I'm stil having serious performance problems. I'm running Excel 2007 SP1 MSO (12.0.6320.5000) on XP and I'm having the same problems mentioned by glew1028 and hydronaut08.

When I have a few worksheets open with graphs, Excel often stops responding for tens of minutes. XY (scatter) plots on large data sets cause the most problems.

Select two columns with more than 30k lines each, create a scatter plot and Excel starts falling of the tracks. After creating the plot, it takes ten or more minutes just to select and delete the graph again.

I'm really frustrated by how much Excel 2007 sucks. Excel 2003 could only import the first 30k lines from a CSV file, but after that it could create, resize or refresh X-Y plots virtually instantaneously. With Excel 2007, I can import 1M data points and calculating formulas happens in a reasonable time, but if you want to plot it, it takes anywhere from 10x to 10000x longer than Excel 2003

 

[meeper]

Possible solution

I located a potential solution for the slow graphing bug in Excel 2007.

Because my post count is not high enough, I cannot place a direct link to the hotfix here. However, the Microsoft knowledge base ID numbers are 938538 and 938565. From the knowledge base, you can find info about the bug and a link to the hotfix download site.

Issues that the hotfix package fixes

This hotfix fixes the following issue: 938565. Graphics do not appear as expected in an Excel 2007 workbook.

This hotfix package fixes the following issues that were not previously documented in a Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

• You experience slow performance in Excel 2007. This issue occurs if the following conditions are true:
  • A chart contains lots of data points.
  • The value (y) axis is fixed.
• When you convert a Microsoft Office Excel 2003 workbook that contains complex charts, Excel 2007 may stop responding.

Unfortunately, this hotfix is incompatible with SP1, so I have not attempted the fix personally. I'd love to hear if anyone has luck with this hotfix. Then I'll have to weigh installing the hotfix vs. uninstalling SP1.