Excel 2003 versus Excel 2007 calculation speed

S

Stan Brown

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:39:23 -0400 from Bob Flanagan
My conclusion is obvious. Excel 2007 is lower than molasses on a cold
winter's day. It takes 20X longer to do the same task of calculate and
record. And this is without charts, which I understand from other posters
really slows Excel down.
Click to expand...

I've heard rumors that there will be a hotfix fairly soon to address
the speed issues. The rumors come from a usually reliable source, but
I'm not at liberty to identify him or her.
 
B

Bob Flanagan

I'm running an interesting test on a PC of Excel 2003 and Excel 2007. I ran
a Monte Carlo simulation in Excel 2003. The workbook has 50 input cells
(cells where random values per distributions are input) and 200 calculation
(formula) cells. So, it is basically a small workbook. No conditional
formatting. No charts. The VBA code calculates random values per
distributions and puts into the input cells. The workbook is then
recalculated and the values of the input and output cells (20 of the formula
cells) are recorded. Only cell values are recorded - formatting is not set
on the cells until the end of the simulation. No copy and pasting is done.
The PC has a 1.6 GHz processor and 1GB of ram running Windows XP.

With Excel 2003, 2,000 simulations were done in a minute. For 10,000
simulations, typically minimum I run, it took five minutes.

With Excel 2007 100 simulations took a minute to run. To do 1,000
simulations takes 10 minutes. To do 2,000 simulations takes 20 minutes. I
haven't finished the 10,000 simulations - it will take close to two hours
for it run. I'm going to go to dinner first. Which is why I said in the
first paragraph that I was running an interesting test - it is still running
(perhaps I should say crawling, but that is too fast of a word)

My conclusion is obvious. Excel 2007 is lower than molasses on a cold
winter's day. It takes 20X longer to do the same task of calculate and
record. And this is without charts, which I understand from other posters
really slows Excel down.

Bob Flanagan
Macro Systems
Productivity add-ins and downloadable books on VB macros for Excel
 
N

Nick Hodge

Bob

I'm not too surprised. The whole calc engine has been re-vamped to
multi-thread it for use with the new multi-core processors and increased use
of actual multi-processors, including the new Excel Server (Services), which
is likely to be on a multi-processor machine.

I think so much work went into that part that the optimisation with one
processor was too late for this release. MS are very interested in slow
calc'ing workbooks so if you wanted someone to take a look at MS I may be
able to

--
HTH
Nick Hodge
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Southampton, England
[email protected]
www.nickhodge.co.uk
 
B

Bob Flanagan

Nick, I'd be glad to share what I have with anyone at MS. I can be
contacted directly at [email protected]. Remove the Nospam.
Leave the 1. Plus, my phone number is below.

Bob Flanagan
Macro Systems
Phone: 302-234-9857, cell 302-584-1771
http://www.add-ins.com
Productivity add-ins and downloadable books on VB macros for Excel
 
B

Bob Flanagan

I decided to do a test on Excel 2007 and Excel 2007 chart speed also. For
this test, I created 500 lines of data. Each data line had 26 data points.
No formulas, just values. I set up a macro to plot every 5 lines to a
chart, with charts having a title and x and y axis labels. Just simple
straight line plots - no formatting or any other enhancements.

In Excel 2003, it took 8 seconds to create the 100 charts, or 0.08 seconds
per chart.

In Excel 2007, it took 5 minutes 54 seconds to create the 100 charts. That
is 3.54 seconds per chart. Or 44 times longer.

I retract my statement that Excel 2007 is slower than molasses. It is far
slower than molasses. Perhaps we could have a contest to decide what is as
slow as Excel 2007.

Remind me once again why Microsoft wants users to go to 2007. Productivity?

Bob Flanagan
Macro Systems
http://www.add-ins.com
Productivity add-ins and downloadable books on VB macros for Excel
 
A

alexcn

Hi Bob,

I am finding similar problems on calculation speed with Excel 2007,
particularly in workbooks that have named ranged and/or external named
ranges (something which I need to maintain in order to make future
maintenance easier) I was wondering if anyone contributing to this
thread had heard anything back from MS?

I have searched the OfficeUpdate pages on MS site hoping to find
mention of a hotfix but nothing as yet. I have found that on
occasions when updating linked files to accomodate changes in the
constraints of the named range that Excel crashed completely. The
Event Viewer reports the following cryptic message:

Hanging application EXCEL.EXE, version 12.0.4518.1014, hang module
hungapp, version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0x00000000.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Alex
 
B

Bob Flanagan

Alex, I too hope that Microsoft improves Excel 2007.

A friend had the same problem with updating links causing Excel to crash.
Try using Rob Bovey's code cleaner on the target files first. It seems that
old modules don't like Excel 2007, even though they are no involved in the
update process. Let me know if it works.
http://www.appspro.com/Utilities/CodeCleaner.htm

Bob Flanagan
Macro Systems
http://www.add-ins.com
Productivity add-ins and downloadable books on VB macros for Excel
 
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