Excel 2008 is still SLOW for large files with charts

[shahroozohio]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

2008 for relatively large files with charts. However, Excel 2008 has at best improved marginally. Excel 2008 is still MUCH MUCH slower than Excel 2003 running on Parallels. For crying loud, I have the latest Mac with 4GB of RAM, but I still can't use Excel 2008! Please do something about Excel 2008. Why do serious users like me have to keep on going back to a legacy program such as Excel 2003?

I have posed similar complaints in the past several months, but the developers appear to be aloof to fixing this major shortcoming of Excel 2008. The question is WHY? Have the developers lost their talents? What happened to those developers who wrote powerful programs such as Excel 2003????

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

2008 for relatively large files with charts. However, Excel 2008 has at best
improved marginally. Excel 2008 is still MUCH MUCH slower than Excel 2003
running on Parallels. For crying loud, I have the latest Mac with 4GB of RAM,
but I still can't use Excel 2008! Please do something about Excel 2008. Why
do serious users like me have to keep on going back to a legacy program such
as Excel 2003?

I have posed similar complaints in the past several months, but the
developers appear to be aloof to fixing this major shortcoming of Excel 2008.
The question is WHY? Have the developers lost their talents? What happened to
those developers who wrote powerful programs such as Excel 2003????

First, you're asking in the wrong forum - this is a peer-to-peer group.
Talk to MS using Help/Send Feedback...

Second, WinXL has been faster than MacXL for many many versions now.
Probably as a result of being able to access deeper levels of an OS
owned and controlled by the same company, but that's just a guess.

Third, the developers of XL03 (and XL02 and XL07) work in the WinXL
group, while the MacXL group is considerably smaller. In fact, the
entire MacOffice group is probably smaller than the WinXL group. The
MacXL developers have made some pretty substantial progress in
optimization, and even more in user interface (things that the WinXL
devs then appropriate for the next Win version), but they don't have the
resources to do as much or as quickly as they'd like.

Complaining won't really do much - the MacXL people know that MacXL is
slower than WinXL (though some specific problems have been helped in
SP2). MacXL14 will probably be speedier than XL08, but almost certainly
not as fast as WinXL14.

However, if you have specific bottlenecks that you can identify, sending
detailed Help/Feedback may be useful in prioritizing the areas that the
MacXL devs look at for optimization.

 

[shahroozohio]

Thanks for your response. It looks like Excel 2008 or its successors will never be a powerful tool. Therefore, what choices do users like me have? Excel 2008 has been a thorn in my switch to Mac. If you've any suggestions for a useful spreadsheet program that runs on Mac, please share it with me and other users who're suffering from the lackluster performance of Excel 2008.

 

[paultimore]

I seem to be having a similar problem. Anytime I try to change
anything on a chart using excel 2008 with a 2.9Ghz intel core 2 duo
power mac with 4 GB of RAM the computer freezes up. And by anything
that means anything...right clicking, moving the chart, changing one
data point, renaming an axis...etc. Older version of excel work fine
and all other programs work fine.

Any thoughts?

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

I seem to be having a similar problem. Anytime I try to change
anything on a chart using excel 2008 with a 2.9Ghz intel core 2 duo
power mac with 4 GB of RAM the computer freezes up. And by anything
that means anything...right clicking, moving the chart, changing one
data point, renaming an axis...etc. Older version of excel work fine
and all other programs work fine.

Any thoughts?

Is Excel up to date? Several issues regarding this were fixed or improved
with recent updates.

 

[shahroozohio]

At least, my Excel is up to date (version 12.2.1). Excel is fine so long as you don't try to chart a simple x-y plot for relatively large files. Things come to a "halt" as soon as you try to chart data. Excel 2004 is somewhat workable but not Excel 2008.

As far as I am concerned, Excel 2008 has become just a tool to make "pretty charts for small data sets." Excel used to be a horse power but no more.

When is this problem going to be solved? If you like, I can send one of my data files so you "feel my pain."

Thanks for your support

 

[johnfkitchen]

It's not just workbooks with charts that are slow with 2008.

I have a 9 megabyte workbook with a lot of formulae, and no charts that I was playing around with

The time to open varies according to which Excel and environment I use. Times are CPU times measured from request to open including loading the Excel application in each case. Wall clock times for 2008 were very little longer since the CPU was the gating factor, with load times driving one core on my MBP to high 90s% busy

1. Excel 2007 native (bootcamp) = 15 seconds
2. Excel 2007 under VMware Fusion = 28 seconds
3. Excel 2008 SP2 native = 724 seconds (12 minutes and 4 seconds - best of two measurements)

Time to recalculate when modifying many cells in a standard way, same environments as above

1. 6 seconds
2. 10 seconds
3. 35 seconds

So the bottom line is that VMware Fusion and Excel 2007 is a great way to go if the performance bugs you too much, and it also means you avoid the compatibility gremlins. My guess is that Parallels is also good, but I have no personal experience with it.

 

[shahroozohio]

Thanks for your reply.

I've used Parallels & Excel 2003. That has worked fine. HOWEVER, I am very much annoyed by EXCEL 2008! Why do we have to use bootcamp, VMware, or Parallels to get our work done? Excel 2008 is a useless piece of software in its present form. I hope that Microsoft reads these exchanges to see how frustrated many users are!

 

[shahroozohio]

Out of curiosity, I tried one of my "large files" on a 10-inch mini computer running XP. This "baby laptop" has only 1 Gb of ram and Atom Intel processor; so it is not a powerful computer at all in comparison to my Dual Core MacBook with 4 Gb of ram. Excel 2003 or 2007 zipped through the file with no problem. If I can something like this on an "inferior" computer, why can't get the same performance on a powerful Mac????