Need Expert Advice

R

Rebecca

Hi. I am using Excel 2003 on a laptop with 512 RAM and 1.2 Ghz CPU. I have
one xls file that is now close to 100 megabytes. It opens very slowly, but
seems to work well once opened. I was wondering if I am pushing the limits
with such a large file. Could some of the experts in this forum please tell
me at what point files become too large to handle? Thanks.
 
K

Ken Wright

Charles is as expert as you're going to find wrt this stuff:-

http://www.decisionmodels.com/memlimitsc.htm

But, I'll give you one piece of advice that I'm sure isn't necessary as you
will already have done it:-

BACK IT UP NOW!!!!

You are certainly pushing the limits wrt what most of us would generally
consider a manageable size for a spreadsheet. You don't say what is in your
workbook, but 100MB is a lot of data to lose if it goes wrong. I work with
a number of Pivot tables that are based on circa 40-50K rows of data by
around 40 columns of data. These tend to fall out at around 45/50 MB or
thereabouts, so I guess I'm curious to know what's driving the 100MB size?
 
R

Rebecca

Thanks Ken. I have about 60 separate worksheets in the xls file. I will
have to add about 40 more, probably bringing the entire file to close to 200
megabytes! It would be nice to keep all this data in one xls file, but if
you advise me to do otherwise, well, you're the expert and I'll follow your
advice.
 
K

Ken Wright

Depends on what the data is, what it means to your structure to split it up
etc. I don't have a single workbook that would even approach that amount of
data at work, but then we're still on Excel XP there and it doesn't have the
capability that 2003 does wrt what it can handle. That having been said,
it's still kind of hard to envisage something that size to be honest.

What does the workbook actually consist of then? I appreciate it's lots of
sheets, but are we talking lots of formulas here, just raw data or what?
What kind of ranges have been used on each of these sheets, and what kind of
delineation of the data does the breakout between sheets give you?
 
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